Linux major ubuntu full partition issues

[digidude]

let me start by saying

AAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (fukin) GGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

fired up my linux PC a few weeks ago (yeh, i dont normally rush things lol) to be met with an error about not being able to boot as the HDD was 100% full, so, using google and carlsberg, i got ubuntu onto a usb stick and can hapilly boot and mount the hdd, but, as i wasnt the 'owner' of the hdd i couldnt really do anything, so, i found out how to make myself the owner of the hdd, and erased about 65Gb of crap, the next step in the tutorial was to remove the usb with ubuntu on which it had been started from, and reboot the machine, and everything will be hunky dory

but

its not

now its coming up with even more errors about not being the owner of all sorts of things, and fails to do anything at all (as id changed the owner from whatever it was before, to ubuntu:ubuntu

i dont know what the original 'owner' was called, something like hp1256534

does anyone have any ideas please?

 

[davvvo]

for files and folders
right click the file then click properties
permissions tab see who owner is

if you lost the login password for that owner you can change the pass easy
follow how here
-http://tinyurl.com/4umjjr

and here

Reset root password
-http://tinyurl.com/csfjl77


then you can change owner of them files to what ever you want via the terminal like this
chown digidude /file/path/file-name

or

make all files temporary non root type this in terminal
gksudo nautilus

 

[Shindig]

I like it... "So using Google and carlsberg"

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk

 

[Him Her]

Oh Bugger, missed this one

Assuming you haven't given up and simply re-installed the simple answer is to re-install in any case as it's 'not possible' to restore the owners and permissions without a full backup. On the other hand I don't believe in the 'no win scenario'!

Depending on the distribution and version different options exist.

1 - You could try installing the same distribution and version on another drive in the same system, mount the new install and use the new install as a reference for ownership and permissions. If a lot of owner/perms got trashed this can be scripted.

2 - If you're sure you only trashed files in your user area, just create a new account and copy the needed files across then delete the trashed account.

For future reference, the best way to deal with this issue is to boot from the USB key (as you did), mount the stuffed file system, chroot to the mounted file system (thus giving you root permissions automatically) and then delete whatever you need to.

 

[digidude]

Oh Bugger, missed this one

Assuming you haven't given up and simply re-installed the simple answer is to re-install in any case as it's 'not possible' to restore the owners and permissions without a full backup. On the other hand I don't believe in the 'no win scenario'!

Depending on the distribution and version different options exist.

1 - You could try installing the same distribution and version on another drive in the same system, mount the new install and use the new install as a reference for ownership and permissions. If a lot of owner/perms got trashed this can be scripted.

2 - If you're sure you only trashed files in your user area, just create a new account and copy the needed files across then delete the trashed account.

For future reference, the best way to deal with this issue is to boot from the USB key (as you did), mount the stuffed file system, chroot to the mounted file system (thus giving you root permissions automatically) and then delete whatever you need to.

i tried to chroot after mounting the drive, but it still wouldnt give me permissions to remove anything, it was all read only. i know ive sent screengrabs of terminal sessions to engineers in the past, and this will show what the actual 'owner' name was, so im waiting to get one of those screenshots back, and ill then change the owner back from ubuntu:ubuntu to whateveritwas:home , and in theory, i think, it should then boot up again

for now though, i can boot it from usb, mount the drive, and access files, i just cant build anything

 

[digidude]

just in case this helps anyone out in the future, im all back up and running. heres how

i did the above steps, then after rebooting, it refused to boot, as the entire drive had been chown'd to enable me to remove things using the usb version of linux, as i didnt know the name of the original 'owner' i couldnt simply change it back. i went through 4 years worth of emails, and found a terminal session screengrab, that had the original owner detail, HP-dc5750. so i fired up the usb linux, and mounted the drive, i then had to add a new user to that linux install, 'sudo adduser HP-dc5750' , before chown'ing the entire drive back over to this user (an overnight process)

once this was done, i removed the sb stick and rebooted, and viola, everything is back to normal, even if it is about 4 months after the initial 'fail to boot' problem

like i said in the first post, whats the rush

this drama was proudly caused by carlsberg

 

[boardschauer]

I think it was a bad idea to chown the files. This because the owners are important for some programs like mail (postfix) or webserver. Better way would be to boot from USB stick and to become "root" by typing "sudo -i" in the terminal. After that you have root permissions and have full access to all files.