download ubuntu8.04 iso

[William Witt]

On Sunday 10 August 2008 08:38:13 Doug Pollard wrote:
> Debian wrote:
> > On Sat, 2008-08-09 at 20:01 -0400, Doug Pollard wrote:
> >> Got a mess here, have a lot of problems and getting worse.  Was trying
> >> to use kino to capture video  and could not capture. Used sudo  to dv
> >> capture files in my user home folder.  Bad move that!  Am getting error
> >> messages and having problems with with Firefox and cannot down load to
> >> desktop or other files.  I have so many problems I feel it best  to
> >> download Ubuntu 8.04.1 iso in synaptic and reinstall.  Have all my data
> >> saved on external hard drive.    The question is how or can I down load
> >> iso file on synaptic.??
> >>
> >>            Thanks,  Doug
> >
> > well you cant really download the *.iso file from synaptic..you will
> > need to download it from the ubuntu website or from bittorrent
> >
> > from personal experience, i do not recommend reloading ubuntu straight
> > from the repository..something usually happens where either the servers
> > kick you off or the install breaks or something and it screws up the
> > entire thing. IMHO if you really have to, its best to reload just using
> > the CD
> >
> > --cj
>
>     That is a part of my problem.  I can't download anything except in
> synaptic or maybe apt -get.   I had video files  in user's Home  that
> were root files. I captured them using sudo because I needed to burn
> them to dvd.  I then made the mistake of copying them from root.
> That seems to be causing all kinds of problems. My solution was to just
> delete the files in user home and that did not solve the problem most of
> them in Firefox.   I need to get things working as I have video to edit
> and since there are so many problems I was thinking the quickest way to
> get up and running might be to reinstall.  In truth I would much rather
> fix it all in terminal.  I am busy reading the Ubuntu book as I just
> don't have the skill to fix all the problems.
>             Doug

If you truly want to reload the system you can just create a new user to 
download and burn the ISO.  However you should be able to fix your system from 
the command line.  Basically, you need to reclaim the ownership of your home 
directory.  Commands are as follows (be sure to replace all occurrences of 
[username] with your user name) :

cd /home
sudo chown -R [username]:[username] [username]
cd [username]
sudo chown -R [username]:[username] .*

-Line one changes to the home directory (obviously)
-Line two recursively changes the ownership of your home directory to your 
user and group.
-Line four is there because I have had some issues with chown not modifying 
hidden files and directories, so this will ensure it's done.

Be careful with chown using it improperly can mess up a system pretty badly 
(in short: know what you chown). 

William