Is it too late to change my /home partition - and how? [Solved]

[AS]

Thank you guys for stepping in to help
It became middle of the night in my part of the world, so had to sleep a bit...

I would just .... copy my stuff from the old /home to the new /home....

I did think of that as a last solution, but the new home is on a small rapture disk I perfere only using for the system that is too small for my home too. So I have to change it later anyway. And since all this started with my system disk physically broke down I would loose all material in home if this happens again. I would prefer if it works just changing it.

I have forgot to tell you a thing before that might be important. When I started up the new installation wanted to view the old home with Dolphin to get a few files I needed, but had no access from the new user. I then tried to change the permissions for the old userfolder, which is the same name as the new one, it said it failed on a specific file with strange characters but it worked anyway and I had access to the folder from my new user.

Now I went to check the excact permissions of the old userfolder and that is indeed strange and might be the problem.
The owner is named 501
the group is named fuse

Why it finally chose that I don't know, I tried to change both to spinoza

Both my old and new user is called spinoza
They have both the ID 500

Shall I still follow your guide or should I do something else after these new informations?

Sorry for forgetting this, but I thought it was fine with permissions since the the current user have access to the old home folder via Dolphin

The commands provided from djohnston are exactly to fix the current behavior, (as djohnston correctly supposed it was needed),
follow his guide! 

[spinoza]

as, that was a good advice!

djhonston, it was exactly what did the trick, sorry I hesitated but I was unsure what the commands would do. I,m amazed how much user friendly pclinuxos is when these things happen, of cause all user files are there, but until now all my settings are intact too, also in the 2 programs I have already reinstalled.

Thank you a lot for very competent help, you have been extremely precise and easy to understand for a normal user in trouble. Your sharp diagnosis have saved me for a lot of work, thank you all for participating.

[djohnston]

djhonston, it was exactly what did the trick, sorry I hesitated but I was unsure what the commands would do.

No need for apologies. I fully understand you wanting to get it right. Been there, done that. I am glad old-polack and as stepped in with a small correction to what I posted. Doing it the way it was posted before the correction was made would have left you scratching your head. We try to help each other. There may be some tips and tricks you will want to contribute.

I'm glad you got it fixed. I did want to point out one thing for future reference. From your very first post in this thread, it appears that you mounted your old home partition during the new installation. I could be reading it wrong. Anyway, during the installation of PCLinuxOS, it is enough to indicate which partition you want to use as /home. There is no need to manually mount the partition yourself. The installation program will take care of doing what is necessary to complete the installation.

EDIT: If you want to know how to temporarily mount any partition attached to your computer so you can do filecopies, see old-polack's post here. Best way I know of.

[spinoza]

From your very first post in this thread, it appears that you mounted your old home partition during the new installation. I could be reading it wrong. Anyway, during the installation of PCLinuxOS, it is enough to indicate which partition you want to use as /home. There is no need to manually mount the partition yourself. The installation program will take care of doing what is necessary to complete the installation.

Well, no I only pointed it out under the installation but after trying 3 times where it froze under the last part of the installation I gave up. I,m not sure if it was the /home partition that was the problem or it was first under the process making the bootloader, but when I the 4.th time told the installer to use the entire new disk it succeeded right away.

Then, after the install, I got stuck in changing the /home drive via PCC because I could not unmount the existing partition - but as we know now I would have run into trouble anyway because of the permission settings. The link you wrote in the last post will be very useful next time.

About contributing I,m afraid that I don,t have much to contribute with. It's a kind of choice from my side to stay as a user of PCLOS, even I have been using it a many years now. Some basic things I,m familiar with and it's very seldom I need help from the forum, but of my it's nice you're here when stuff messes up, normally by me, not the system :-). Unfortunately my daily job demands that I support and teach superusers of Windows, so I have to keep up in the new stuff and bugs and as you know thats a lot.

So, it's not because I don't want to contribute, simply don't have the skills and I think it would be messed up with the windows junk in my head. Instead I donate frequently to Texstar.

Once again thank you for the help. I can see theres a new button to close a topic since the last time I used the forum. Should I close it or let it stay open for others to comment if they are in the same situation?

[The Chief]

Just a comment, spinoza, but I had a similar problem awhile back, and I changed it with PCC and it was kind enough to copy all the data (from the wrong /home to the new correct /home) for me, without me having to do anything other than agree to let it do that (clicking OK).

[djohnston]

Once again thank you for the help. I can see theres a new button to close a topic since the last time I used the forum. Should I close it or let it stay open for others to comment if they are in the same situation?

No, please don't close it. Edit the title of your first post in this thread and add the world SOLVED somewhere.

[spinoza]

Just a comment, spinoza, but I had a similar problem awhile back, and I changed it with PCC and it was kind enough to copy all the data (from the wrong /home to the new correct /home) for me, without me having to do anything other than agree to let it do that (clicking OK).

Well I tried that ( I think) but had no success, perhaps because of the permissions. Today I got a similar problem after reinstalling VirtualBox because my machine folders are placed in a seperate partition. The settings were intact, but it would not start. Of some reason the permissions of the folders were now set to Root for both owner and group. In this case it was easy to change them to my new user, and VirtualBox works as a charme with my machines and settings. Very cool that it works that smooth, I was a bit nervous that I had to reinstall every guest system again.

djohnston > I will keep it open and add the Solved right away. Thank you.

[wedgetail]

I am just checking out a new install of LXDE on a 20G drive that will be a bit of a test machine.  I noticed your thread a couple of days ago. I am guessing you do know that your thread may be deleted in time, in that case a reminder. 

If the thread is valuable to you I would make an archive copy (both pages inside one file) and keep it on you own system as threads are weeded out at times.  I have found a number of good threads vanished, I had only kept the link to them. No longer.

Once again thanks for help back in MEPIS days. 

[spinoza]

Thank you for that information information wedgetail, I,ll keep some notes for use if I should be unlucky again later.

Hope everything rocks down under, could do with some of your hot summer weather up here.