2009/5/20 Paul Sutton <zl...@zleap.net>: > regarding point B, if you create a new users then won't this cause > permission issues, as say old system has > > /home/paul > > and the new install has /home/paul2 > > the files will still belong to paul, and will need to have ownership > changed (chown) and (chgrp) so you can read as the new user. > > Just a thought, but this is something to perhaps consider, comments > welcome in case I have perhaps mis understood something. > > I have my files on a different partition which makes sense, but you also > make a good point regarding back ups. >
Hi Paul, It gets a bit more complicated than this! The filesystem stores the user and group for each file as a numeric ID. Then the /etc/passwd and /etc/groups files provide a cross-reference for converting the numeric ID into a user (or group) name and vice versa. When you create a user on a new installation, it uses the first free numeric ID above a fixed offset (which I believe is 1000 for Ubuntu). So in the original installation, user 'paul' probably has a numeric ID (UID) of 1000. In the new installation, user 'paul2' probably has a UID of 1000 too, since the new installation knows nothing about the previous user called 'paul', apart from some files in the /home partition belonging to a UID of 1000. If you create more than one user in each installation, you have to create them in the same order so that they get the same UIDs - if you don't, this is the only time you should have to use the chown/chgrp commands, although chown will change group too (just to confuse you even more!). Clear as mud? Cofion/Regards, Neil. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
