Problem with user management

[Darryl LeCount]

<rant>
I've posted this weeks ago on UbuntuForums, bumped it half a dozen
times, asked it three times on three different days at #ubuntu and asked
it here once. The lack of any kind of response, save for someone who has
exactly the same problem and someone who replied once, thinking it was a
problem with the groups - it was partially that, but the problem goes
much deeper (see below) - has been extremely disheartening. In fact, I
think only about 1 in every 8 questions that I've asked on the forums
has gone answered. Two people I know who were interested in Ubuntu have
permanently switched back to Windows because of this. I'm not so
advanced with my knowledge of Ubuntu or Linux in general, but I do try
to help out where I can.
</rant>

Anyway, the problem again: About two weeks ago I came back home from a
weekend away to find a few updates waiting for me. I installed them and
added a friend so that she could access my computer via SSH. I'm using
Feisty, for the record. When I tried to add the friend, however, I
noticed something rather strange. Several things, in fact:

* Despite the presence of users on the PC (nine of them), not a single
one was showing up in the list.
* When I tried to add her to the list nonetheless, it just bombed out.
* After I tried to load up the applet again, it informed me that I
didn't have the necessary permissions.
* I rebooted, and noticed that in my GDM login screen (which has a list
of users on the system), my name appeared three times. I only have two
accounts under my name, one for business and one for pleasure (obviously
with two different usernames)
* I logged in with my user name and found that I had been stripped of my
admin rights. I rebooted, went into recovery mode, readded myself to the
admin group.
* When I logged back in, admin rights were back. All seemed right with
the world again. I went back into the users and groups applet to add
myself to the other groups again. Alas, the users were still not listed.
* I tried adding my friend to the list again, and again, it bombed out,
thusly stripping me of my admin rights yet again.

Since then I've left the applet well alone, and for the time being I'm
making do with using adduser on the command line. However, this
behaviour is worrying and possibly symptomatic of a larger problem
(especially with the GDM issues). Since I use my computer for work, I
really can't afford to have this worry. I'd really like to avoid a
reinstall of Ubuntu as I simply don't have the time. Are there any tests
I can carry out to see if there is a fundamental problem with the user
management? Could it be something with my /etc/groups, /etc/shadow
or /etc/passwd files? Are there any config files that I'm missing here
that are involved with user management that could be causing this?

I would appreciate any help anyone can offer on this matter. If you need
any further information, I'll be happy to give it.

>> Darryl 
 
-- 
Darryl LeCount
www.jamyskis.net
darryl at jamyskis.net

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