old users are not recognized

[omskates]

Spent over an hour searching archives for an answer to this without result.
I have run a clean install of jaunty and did not format my /home partition. I set up a new user at install and changed the computer name (mistake?).

In nautilus as root; all the previous user folders and files are intact & accessible as root.

The command ls /home does indeed list all previous users as well as the new one. So I attempt a password change with an old user name;
passwd 'username' result is unknown user 'username'

Please help me restore old users or user access to the old /home files

Thanks!

[mikewhatever]

Just because previous user directories are present in /home doesn't mean the users are, neither the usernames nor the passwords. All that gets overwritten during a reinstall. The only use there is after a clean install is the one you set up during the installation.

[omskates]

OK good,
Any chance at taking ownership of the previous user's folders?

[rrplay]

omskates Wrote:
In nautilus as root; all the previous user folders and files are intact & accessible as root.


Any chance at taking ownership of the previous user's folders?

check the ownership info in the directory with ls -l

see the man pages for chown & chgrp

Example for changing ownership recursively [-R] of all files in a folder:

$ sudo chown -R {newusername] /folder-location

change the group as well

$ sudo chgrp -R {newgroupnameifneeded} /folder-location

this should help you out.

[omskates]

Thankyou!
I used chown to adopt ownership of the entire user's home folder. I was able to replace firefox profile easily with nautilus. I'll be able to move any other needed folders over using nautilus.
Thanks again!

[rrplay]

Glad it worked out for you ! was not sure if you wanted all the .config files.
anyhow you can probably mark the thread as solved.