On February 24, 2026 7:40:23 AM CST, gfp <[email protected]> wrote:
Am 23.02.26 um 17:29 schrieb W. Knight:
Since it is now just a directory in /home you can remove it and all of its
contents with
cd /home
# Dangerous since it deletes everything specified on the commandline and
# a typo such as having '/' with a space around it
# can wipe your system (yes I have done that accidentally
# before). Use with care.
sudo rm -rf gast.broken.20260202
Cheers, W
I am in the user: gfp
/home
shows 3 users: gfp, gast, gast.broken.20260220
and doing a
sudo rm -rf gast.broken.20260202
asking for password
RET
Did you enter gfp's password here? If you did and the above doesn't
work then you can try .
id # should return that you are gfp
sudo su - # get a root shell using gfp's account password.
id # should return that you are now root
cd /home # Change to home directory
rm -rf gast.broken.20260202 # Recursively force remove the directory
exit # Leave root and return to gfp account.
Which is functionally the same thing but maybe sudo has an
interaction I am unaware of?
this user is still there...
what did I wrong?
this user (directory) has got a key, may be therefore it does not work
I am not sure what it means for the directory to have a key but the only
things I have seen block root removing a file is...
- filesystem mounted read-only (ro)
- the file is on a network mount that has root_squash set
- a file/directory had 'chattr +i' (immutable) applied
but I don't think any of those should apply to your situation.
I will try to recreate your issue, using the below steps on a test
machine, in a bit to confirm that guix isn't doing something I am not
expecting.
- create an account in config.scm and run reconfigure
- move created home directory to placeholder
- recreate user home directory by running reconfigure again
- try to remove placeholder directory
Sorry it didn't work,
Thinking,
W
