>cd /var/backup >ls -la >Actually if there's nothing in there, your problem may lie elsewhere. No, It lists a screen full of files. >4. Type: sudo rm -rf /var/backup/* >5. Reboot (e.g. press Ctrl+Alt+Delete). Did that three times (good with a mouse but bad on typing) but it did not seem to solve the problem. As before it gives me the error message. I hit return and it takes me to the log in screen for multiple users. Click on my name, enter the password and hit Enter. Takes me back to the error message. On shut down it shows: Stopping Deferred Execution Schedule Fail Everything else is fine. On start up it shows: Everything OK So - The machine goes to grub. It will start in Sir Bill mode. On Ubuntu it gives me an error message: GDM could not write to your authorization file. Hit Enter and it takes me to the multi-user log in screen. Click on user and enter password. Takes me to error message. Unless I am doing something real simple wrong I have followed these excellent instructions correctly. Thank goodness I have everything important manually backed up on my usb hard disk :) <div>On 4/23/06, Tommy Trussell <<a href="mailto:tommy.trussell@gmail.com">tommy.trussell@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> On 4/23/06, Tab Gilbert <<a href="mailto:tabbox@gmail.com">tabbox@gmail.com</a>> wrote: > > Just delete the contents of /var/backup > > /var/backup/ > /var/backups/ > > There are two "backup" folders > > the /var/backup/ is locked, has lock icon on it, even under knoppix > the /var/backups/ can be deleted without a problem /var/backups seems to have been created by/for other programs because I see it on my system, and I haven't run simple-backup yet. It looks to me like it has some backup files from system upgrades, so maybe it was created by apt? Maybe you want to re-create the empty directory (with root permissions) just in case your system needs it. As for /var/backup being "locked" -- the permissions must be set to prevent even root from deleting it. Have a look at the permissions, using a terminal. cd /var/backup ls -la Actually if there's nothing in there, your problem may lie elsewhere. In your earlier posting, you said you chose "/" as the destination folder, so I would look to see if there are unusual files at the root level of your drive. (Normally there are only directories at the root level, and the names of those directories are fairly standardized.) Then you can change the permissions -- ubuntu-users mailing list <a href="mailto:ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com </a> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users</a> </blockquote></div>