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[Brian Norman Wootton]

>
>> >> LOL.  Of course it did.  _Normally_, $USER expands to your own user
>> >> ID - but you can't use that under "sudo", because then your ID is
>> >> "root"
>>     
> > 
> > IMHO "under sudo" is ambiguous. Just to clarify: The command doesn't
> > work if you are root already. But if you are the user the shell
> > replaces the "$USER" part with the user name before the sudo command
> > is executed and it should work as intended.
>   

Oops.  My mistake - of course you're right (and this time I checked it).  
Which leads one to wonder what Brian actually did.

cd ~brian
sudo chown -R brian:brian ./*

It's quite possible I've forgotten something here.
brian