Back ground reverts after shutdown.

[wavemaker]

Gooday all. I have my shiny bright new installation of PCLINUX2010 up and running and mostly I find it excellent. However, every time I shutdown and restart, my desktop background settings revert to a standard Linux background. I tried removing it from the list but have not been able to do that. Tips,clues and hints gratefully received. James.

[kjpetrie]

Have you checked permissions and ownership in your home directory - especially .kde4 and .local?

[wavemaker]

Gooday kjpetrie. No I have not checked that. Prolly cause I don't know how. Could you give me some tips on how one does that

[daniel]

simple, right klick on .kde4 and .local, > properties > permissions, there should your username stand

[kjpetrie]

1. Open a file manager, navigate to the parent folder of the file or folder to check, right-click the file and select the permissions tab, as Leiche said

or,

2. open a terminal and type "ls -al /home/" without the quotes, or whatever directory's contents you wish to check.

All files in /home should be owned by you and writeable by the owner unless you have specified otherwise for a particular file.

Unix file permissions are well-documented and a Google search should bring plenty of explanation of how they work.

My guess is that in installing 2010 your user ID has changed and you have restored your /home from a backup with your old UID. If that is the case, the simplest fix is to delete your user and remake it with the correct UID for your files.

[wavemaker]

This is what I get with that command.

[root@localhost ~]# ls -al /home/
total 36
drwxr-xr-x  6 root  root   4096 2010-05-03 08:12 ./
drwxr-xr-x 22 root  root   4096 2010-05-11 13:08 ../
drwx------ 32 james james  4096 2010-05-11 13:12 james/
drwx------ 21 10001 10001  4096 2010-04-17 03:46 live/
drwx------  2 root  root  16384 2010-04-17 03:25 lost+found/
drwx------  2 10000 10000  4096 2009-11-02 05:21 xguest/
[root@localhost ~]#

[Rudge]

James, in your last post, it looks as if you are logged on as "root". Is this the way you normally log on?

[wavemaker]

Gooday Rudge (great old motorcycles them. Rudge Ulster in particular). I do usually log on as root when I am messing about getting a new distro working. My machine is not accessible to any one else so I am not overly concerned. I spose if I stuff there is only me to blame.

[kjpetrie]

You should not log on as root. It is far safer for both yourself and the rest of the Internet to log on as your normal user and become root temporarily when necessary, using su when in a terminal or kdesu in KDE. Most aplications which need root privilege will ask for run kdesu automatically. The only time I log on as root is to change root's colour scheme so root windows will be obvious on my normal desktop.

I hope it is not root's desktop you are trying to configure, as that would indicate an intention to continue running as root. Desktop configuration must be done as the user you intend to run as.

You have directories in /home for numerical users. It appears you intend to share the /home with other systems with users pclos doesn't know about, but apart from that, all looks well.

Now we need to know the permissions in your own directory are correct, so can you now open a terminal and type just "ls -al" to check everything in there has correct permissions?

[wavemaker]

Gooday kjpetrie. I didn't realize that I could cause others problems by logging in as root. What happens? Below is result of running that command.

[james@localhost ~]$ ls -al
total 220
drwx------ 32 james james  4096 2010-05-12 17:59 ./
drwxr-xr-x  6 root  root   4096 2010-05-03 08:12 ../
drwx------  3 james james  4096 2010-05-03 08:37 .adobe/
-rw-r--r--  1 james james    24 2010-01-17 23:49 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--  1 james james   191 2010-01-17 23:49 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--  1 james james   124 2010-01-17 23:49 .bashrc
drwxr-xr-x  5 james james  4096 2010-05-04 20:11 .config/
drwx------  3 james james  4096 2010-05-03 08:12 .dbus/
-rwxrwxr-x  1 root  root     12 2010-05-03 10:04 .desktop*
drwxr--r--  2 james james  4096 2010-05-07 17:36 Desktop/
-rw-r--r--  1 james james    24 2010-05-03 10:04 .dmrc
drwx------  3 james james  4096 2010-05-07 17:37 Documents/
drwx------  2 james james  4096 2010-05-03 09:02 Downloads/
-rw-------  1 james james    16 2010-05-03 08:18 .esd_auth
drwxr-xr-x  2 james james  4096 2010-05-03 10:06 .fontconfig/
drwx------  4 james james  4096 2010-05-12 17:58 .gconf/
drwx------  2 james james  4096 2010-05-12 18:00 .gconfd/
drwx------  3 james james  4096 2010-05-12 17:58 .gnome2/
drwx------  2 james james  4096 2010-05-03 08:18 .gnome2_private/
drwxrwxr-x  3 james james  4096 2010-05-03 17:56 .google/
-rw-rw-r--  1 james james   137 2010-05-12 17:58 .gtk-bookmarks
-rw-r--r--  1 james james   217 2010-03-02 13:40 .gtkrc-2.0
drwxr--r--  4 james james  4096 2010-05-03 08:12 .kde4/
drwxr-xr-x  3 james james  4096 2010-04-07 18:54 .local/
drwx------  3 james james  4096 2010-05-03 08:37 .macromedia/
-rw-rw-r--  1 james james     0 2010-05-03 08:12 .mdk-menu-migrated
drwx------  2 james james  4096 2010-01-19 06:53 Movies/
drwxrwxr-x  4 james james  4096 2010-05-03 08:21 .mozilla/
drwxrwxr-x  2 james james  4096 2010-05-04 20:11 .mplayer/
drwx------  2 james james  4096 2010-01-19 06:53 Music/
drwx------  3 james james  4096 2010-05-03 10:17 .ooo3/
drwx------  3 james james  4096 2010-05-03 18:07 Pictures/
drwx------  2 james james  4096 2010-05-03 08:12 .pulse/
-rw-------  1 james james   256 2010-05-03 08:12 .pulse-cookie
drwxrwxr-x  2 james james  4096 2010-05-03 17:06 repo-speed-test/
drwxr-xr-x  2 james james  4096 2010-05-03 08:12 Templates/
drwx------  4 james james  4096 2010-05-03 18:38 .thumbnails/
drwx------  3 james james  4096 2010-05-03 08:18 .thunderbird/
drwx------  7 james james  4096 2010-05-12 17:58 tmp/
drwx------  2 james james  4096 2010-05-03 17:28 .tvtime/
drwxr-xr-x  2 james james  4096 2010-05-03 08:12 Videos/
-rw-------  1 james james   176 2010-05-12 17:58 .Xauthority
-rw-r--r--  1 james james  1897 2010-03-23 01:02 .xbindkeysrc
drwxr-xr-x  2 james james  4096 2010-05-12 17:58 .xine/
-rw-------  1 james james 47087 2010-05-12 18:00 .xsession-errors
[james@localhost ~]$

[kjpetrie]

Can't see anything wrong there. I was hoping it was a permissions problem but they all look OK. Maybe someone else has some other ideas.

To answer the other question, the risk to others from running as root is that you are more vulnerable to being cracked and that means your computer can be used as a launchpad for attacking others without your knowledge. The Internet means no computer is an island and the security of each affects the security of all.

[daniel]

Gooday all. I have my shiny bright new installation of PCLINUX2010 up and running and mostly I find it excellent. However, every time I shutdown and restart, my desktop background settings revert to a standard Linux background. I tried removing it from the list but have not been able to do that. Tips,clues and hints gratefully received. James.

From where get you the background?

[wavemaker]

Gooday Leiche, good point. The folder is on an external 1TB hd.

[daniel]

then is here the error...
Copy your picture in your homefolder 

[wavemaker]

Thanks again. I have them over on that folder because I have a slide show of all my photos running and its quite large. If I copied them on to the home folder on this drive I would not have  any room left on this drive. At least that is what I thought.