User Login Password Change not Applying (7.04)

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi Mike,

On Fri, 21 Dec 2007, Mike White wrote:

> Gentlemen, thank you for your help. It got me started. I am still
> investigating everything that has been suggested to me. Here is an
> update. I was able to delete /home/student9. Yet I getting frustrated
> trying to re-create the folder and/or the user. When I went into Users
> and Groups and tried to add student9, it would not 'save' the user. The
> logs showed no attempt to create a user. Almost like my efforts didn't
> exist. Please don't analyze that from a tech standpoint.

To be honest I got caught up in why you couldn't do the deletion, but
should've told you not to do the deletion.  Not that you can't reverse it,
just that really what you needed to do was just delete a few things within
that directory:

	sudo rm -r ~student9/.gconf
	sudo rm -r ~student9/.gnome*

which just deletes the gnome settings and should probably clear your
problem.

However if the account were still present and you'd just deleted the home
directory, you could just do:

	sudo cp -r /etc/skel /home/student9
	sudo chown -R student9.student9 /home/student9

which will create the home directory from the skeleton and make student9
the owner of it.  That's less complex than recreating the account.

> It finally worked when, while adding student9 again, I made it a member
> of a LabStudents group and chose a new password that I have never
> attempted in the lab before. I don't know if it was the grouping or the
> different password that changed Edubuntu's mind. I would be interested
> in explanations, but it's not necessary. I may yet understand.

I've got to say, I can't really explain this.  In general, though, deleting
and recreating the account is a little extreme just for a corrupted
profile.

Hopefully things are working for you now, which is the main thing,

Gavin