Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1164395
In Process
vladimir pavloski
Asked: 2019-08-09 11:14:49 +0800 CST

Need help to fix owner, groups and user permissions in Xubuntu 16.04.6

  • 772

Some time ago I messed up my system users and groups permissions, now I can't run users-admin command, the output is : the owner of /home/vladimir/.config/ibus/bus is not vladimir!(the owner is root), if I change to vladimir I got the same output displaying that the owner is not root. I can't modify anything on users and groups GUI, when I try to modify any setting immediately open and close several windows so fast that I can't read what's going on! Appreciate some help, I have one user added long time ago.

permissions xubuntu users administrator ownership

1 Answers

  1. It sounds like you have stirred your system with a rootstick, run GUI tools as root, and in general, behaved carelessly. What's the users-admin command? However,

    To see what root owns in your $HOME directory, 

    sudo find $HOME -user root

    and, to change them back to you, 

    sudo find $HOME -user root -print0 \
    xargs -0 -r sudo chown "$USER"

    If sudo doesn't work for you, you've really broken your system. I hope you have backed up your data.

    If you KNOW of a file you've messed with, find the package that provides it, and re-install that package. For example, if you've changed the permission/ownership of /bin/su, you could do:

    walt@bat:~(127)$ type -p su
/bin/su
walt@bat:~(0)$ dpkg -S $(!!)
dpkg -S $(type -p su)
login: /bin/su
walt@bat:~(0)$ sudo apt-get install --reinstall login

    But, the easiset, safest way is to backup your data, ensure that you can read your backup, reinstall the WHOLE system, and restore.

    • 0