Desk top missing

[Leonard Chatagnier]

--- Bart Silverstrim <bsilver at chrononomicon.com>
wrote:

> 
> 
> Leonard Chatagnier wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for the added info, Bart. It is reassuring.
> I
> > presume that when I get to the new user stage and
> the
> > old files/folders are not on the desktop(kde 4.1)
> then
> > it is no point in continuing.  Correct?  Say the
> new
> > user desktop has all I wanted, I would just copy
> from
> > old user home the files I wanted to keep for
> > configuration, etc. as one way of getting the
> desired
> > results. Then I could just chown -R olduser if I
> had
> > to have it?
> 
> I think I know what you're saying...
> 
> If you log in as the new user and the missing files
> are recreated (the 
> defaults), to get any additional files you used to
> have, you would do 
> the sudo chown -R newuser:newuser ~/oldhome (which
> changes the owner of 
> the files...) and move them from ~/oldhome/Desktop
> to ~/Desktop.
> 
Glad you knew what I meant and not what I said. You
answered my question the way I meant it to be.  Thanks
A Lot!

> Chown changes the owner from your old user to the
> new user. You must use 
> sudo because sudo gives administrator power...you
> can't, as newuser, 
> arbitrarily change ownership of files you don't own
> (marked as olduser).
> 
I'm ok with this. Done it and know it.  Thanks for
being thorough and making sure I understand. Much
appreciated.

> Once you own them you can copy or move to them to
> other locations in 
> newuser's folder structure, like ~/Desktop, and they
> should reappear.
> 
Thanks, this just about clears up any issues/Questions
I had for the new users home dir.

> Since you copied the data over in the first place
> (with "sudo cp -R 
> /home/olduser ~/oldhome") it means you're working
> with data in your new 
> user's directory, not the old user, so you're
> sandboxed...play all you 
> want, you can still log off and log back in as your
> "broken" old login.
> 
Ok, understand that clearly and perfectly.

> >  OTOH, is there anything I can do to also
> > fix the old home to get the desktop back?  
> 
> Depends on what happened to it. Was it corrupted
> from a crash? You may 
> not be able to in that case. Or it may be something
> so fubarred that you 
> may be able to fix it, but the time invested will
> frustrate you to the 
> point of pulling hair out before this other "fix"
> would work.
> 
OK, understand this. It did occurr from a power
failure so I'd better keep both homes available until
I'm sure I want the new user home. IMWOT, if the files
are still on the OS in $HOME/Desktop I should be able
to restore  them to the GUI Desktop.  But I don't know
that nor do I know what KDE file controls it. Maybe if
I did, I could fix it myself and maybe not.

> I honestly don't know...it's possible that you could
> boot to a recovery 
> console and try fsck to fix the filesystem (you
> might want to consider 
> having it checked anyway in case there's a problem
> with the filesystem).
> 
Thought about it just haven't yet. I will do this
first as it may be the quickest fix if it works.
Thanks for the reminder.

> >Sorry for
> > the additional questions but it would be a clearer
> > understanding for me if you would answer them.
> > Thanks much for your help.  BTW, I'll eventually
> do
> > this but I may dally for a bit and will post the
> > result when I get to it.  Thanks again,
> 
> No problem. We all run into issues at times, and
> when it's our primary 
> system it can be especially nerve wracking. You're
> lucky that it's still 
> usable if there is filesystem corruption or
> goofiness in it...like I 
> said, you may want to still look up doing an FSCK at
> boot time. There's 
> a file you can create (using "sudo touch") in the
> root directory to tell 
> Ubuntu to perform a repair at boot time, if you're
> interested. You might 
> find it in the Man pages. *DO NOT RUN FSCK TO REPAIR
> A RUNNING FILESYSTEM*.
> 
Thanks for this tip also.  A good idea. I'll RTFM. I
am aware of the warning above as I once did it that
way in my early Debian experience which caused me to
reinstall. I'm going to e2fsck first right after
reading the manual and hopefully don;t have to go any
further. But if not successful will do the new user
routine.  Thanks for all the detail.  It's much
appreciated.
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Leonard Chatagnier
lenc5570 at sbcglobal.net