re-install

[Liam Proven]

On 20 March 2013 13:56, Ash Wyllie <ashwmls at gmail.com> wrote:

> Would the user number be in a file, such as .evolution/something
> or .mozilla/something? It would be interesting to find out.

I don't understand why you're asking.

No, nothing should store your user number, although programs might
store the path to files or settings, usually in the form of
/home/$USERNAME/.foo/.bar or something.

This is why you need the username to be the same.

Why it's important to have the user *number* the same as well is that
that is how Unix & Linux security works. Your files are owned by you &
only you have full permissions to them. (Well, and root, but that's
another story.)

Permissions are stored by user number, not by name.

So you might have a setting in a file called /home/diane/.mailrc that
says that your email is in home/diane/mail/ - that is why the username
must be the same - and that file is owned by user [1000,1000] and that
is why the user *number* must be the same as well.

If the number's the same but the name is different, nothing will be
able to find its config files. Let's say you restore the contents of
/home/diane to the folder /home/ash - then programs will be looking
for files in /home/diane/mail and now it will be in /home/ash/mail and
they won't find it.

Now let's say you create a second user, diane. Now the files will be
in /home/diane/ which is correct, but the config files will be owned
by [1000,1000] - the user number from the old system - but in the
folder belonging to user [1001,1001] and they won't work.

--
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