On 20091015_015725, Klistvud wrote: > Dne, 15. 10. 2009 00:17:42 je AG napisal(a): > > Due to something that got seriously borked on my wife's Lenny system, > > I > > have decided that the best way to tackle this is to create a new > > account > > for her and transfer existing files over (excluding the KDE config > > files > > which is where the borkness seems to be). > > > > The reasons for doing this are because somehow one or more of the KDE > > configuration files has resulted in a number of problems, such as > > losing > > desktop icons and removable media (e.g. an USB stick) triggering OOo > > rather than opening the actual medium, and small but really > > irritating > > > > things like that, which despite my best attempts to fix remain > > unfixed. > > > > When I create a new account to test these issues in, I cannot > > replicate > > the problems, so am keen to transfer non-configuration files over > > (with > > the exception of the applications she uses). > > The approach that I was thinking of would be to burn the files and > > directories (including her KMail and Evolution directories as well as > > the IceWeasel bookmarks) onto a CD, delete her existing /home/<user > > directory> and then add her as a new user again, and then transfer > > what > > is on the CD back into the newly created account. > > > > Can anyone see any potential gotchas to this approach, or recommend a > > more sophisticated way of accomplishing the same objective? > > > > TIA > > > > AG > > > > A potential gotcha may be, say, file permissions, but there may be > others I am not aware of. Your wife may "own" files scattered over > several filesystems, and her ownership is established by the OS via her > user number (generally a number over 1000, say, 1001 or 1002 etc), NOT > via her user name. In order to avoid such (and other) potential > gotchas, I would not take your approach. Instead, I would simply set up > a new user foo, rename her current .kde (or .kde3 or .kde4 or whatever > it's called these days) to .kde.old, and copy foo's .kde over to her > home dir using the --no-preserve=all option IIRC. That way, she will > get a fresh default KDE which you'll have to personalize from scratch > again. If you're into risky games, you could even try reinstating some > of her olden configurations by copying select subdirs from .kde.old to > the new .kde dir ... but doing that, as you certainly know, you may > well end messing up the new configuration too. > > Good luck! > -- > Certifiable Loonix User #481801 >
I think Kevin's basic suggestion does not change userID number or userName of the Mrs., so there should be no reason to worry about files that she owns, but are scattered about in various places in the file-system. Grabbing bits and pieces out of KDE config files strikes me as very foolish. KDE does not publish much information on about the details of the format of its config files. It makes heavy use of dbus, so things that appear to the user to be atomic changes may actually require multiple concurrent atomic changes to the config files. It is better to use the KDE user interface to adjust the KDE configuration in the way that the designers intended to have adjustments made. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
