Changed home directory permissions and now I can't login.

[devongarber1]

Hello,
I was trying to keep one user from viewing my home directory so I changed the advanced permissions in Dolphin so that the user couldn't read or write. Then later when I logged in the screen just went black and went back to the login screen. I have Kubuntu 13.04. I have tried all kinds of chmod commands.

[coffeecat]

You may find this tutorial helpful for rescuing the situation:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=976610

Since you can't log in to a GUI, you would need to press ctrl-alt-F1 at the login screen to get to a virtual terminal from where you can run all the commands.

[devongarber1]

Unfortunately, that didn't work. But when I tried to access .dmrc in nano I noticed it said

[ Error reading /home/devon/.dmrc: Permission denied ]

then I ran the first two commands again and it let me look at it, so I rebooted and it says "Permission denied" again!

[coffeecat]

If you ran the commands for correcting ownership and permissions on .dmrc from that tutorial correctly you would not get a permission denied error.

From the virtual console, run:

ls -l /home/devon/.dmrc

And look at section 5 of that tutorial again. You may have missed something.

[devongarber1]

This is the output of ls -l:

----rw----+ 1 devon devon 29 Aug 23 16:18 /home/devon/.dmrc

I ran those commands a few more times, but I noticed in my other user when I go to /home/devon and look at .dmrc's properties it says

Owner: Forbidden
Group: Can Read & Write
Others: Forbidden

but when I run those commands it says

Owner: Can Read & Write
Group: Can Read
Others: Can Read

, then when I try to log in all the permissions go back. This is the output of ls -l after I run the commands.

-rw-r--r--+ 1 devon devon 29 Aug 23 16:27 /home/devon/.dmrc

[coffeecat]

This is the output of ls -l:

----rw----+ 1 devon devon 29 Aug 23 16:18 /home/devon/.dmrc

That is 060 permissions which is unusable. The only way I know to get that would have been to run:

chmod 060 /home/devon/.dmrc

Which is not in that tutorial at all. I wonder if 060 was a typo for 600. Check and double-check any terminal command before you run it.

I ran those commands a few more times, but I noticed in my other user when I go to /home/devon and look at .dmrc's properties it says

Owner: Forbidden
Group: Can Read & Write
Others: Forbidden

but when I run those commands it says

Owner: Can Read & Write
Group: Can Read
Others: Can Read

,

Why are you running commands from your "other" user? This only complicates things, and shouldn't work anyway. That is why I suggested to run commands from a virtual terminal. Again: press Ctrl-Alt-F1 from the login screen to open a virtual terminal, log in as devon and then run the commands. Do not run any of these commands from your other user.

then when I try to log in all the permissions go back. This is the output of ls -l after I run the commands.

-rw-r--r--+ 1 devon devon 29 Aug 23 16:27 /home/devon/.dmrc

What with the above, I can't follow what is going on. That last set of permissions is 644, which is exactly what .dmrc should be.

Boot up, at the GUI log in screen go to tty1 with Ctrl-Alt-F1, log in as devon and follow the tutorial again, section 5. Do not log in as your other user. Now press Ctrl-Alt-F7 to get you to tty7. Log in as devon. Check that everything is working as it should be. Reboot and see if you can log in as devon again. Only then consider what you need to be doing to prevent another account from seeing your devon files, but I think that might need a separate thread.

[Morbius1]

@coffeecat,

Don't mean to interrupt but we still don't know what the permissions are on /home/devon/.dmrc

This is the output of ls -l:

----rw----+ 1 devon devon 29 Aug 23 16:18 /home/devon/.dmrc

That little "+" at the end of the permissions indicates that when he went into advanced permissions in Dolphin he activated an Access Control List for that object. An "ls -l" won't tell you the real permissions. You need to run something like this:

getfacl -t /home/devon/.dmrc

I try to stay away from ACL's because they are too complicated for my little brain but I remember the "+" indicating that it is in control of permissions.

[coffeecat]

Don't mean to interrupt but we still don't know what the permissions are on /home/devon/.dmrc

That little "+" at the end of the permissions indicates that when he went into advanced permissions in Dolphin he activated an Access Control List for that object. An "ls -l" won't tell you the real permissions. You need to run something like this:

getfacl -t /home/devon/.dmrc

I try to stay away from ACL's because they are too complicated for my little brain but I remember the "+" indicating that it is in control of permissions.

@Morbius1, interrupt away! I'm sure I missed something, because I'm not particularly familiar with Dolphin's features. Thanks for the input!

[devongarber1]

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I can't really run those commands in my other user as it is not a sudoer. I was just reading this thread from it and viewing the permissions of .dmrc in Dolphin. I tried running the commands again but still with the same outcome. This is the output of getfacl:

getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: home/devon/.dmrc
USER     devon    ---
user      apache   ---
GROUP   devon    ---
mask                 rw-
other                 ---

apache is my other user.

[sandyd]

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I can't really run those commands in my other user as it is not a sudoer. I was just reading this thread from it and viewing the permissions of .dmrc in Dolphin. I tried running the commands again but still with the same outcome. This is the output of getfacl:

getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: home/devon/.dmrc
USER     devon    ---
user      apache   ---
GROUP   devon    ---
mask                 rw-
other                 ---

apache is my other user.

try

sudo setfacl -x u:devon /home/devon/.dmrc
sudo setfacl -x u:apache /home/devon/.dmrc
sudo setfacl -x g:devon /home/devon/.dmrc

if you cant login to a user with sudo privileges, choose "recovery mode" during computer startup (may have to press a key to make the grub menu show), and run it there