ICEauthority error after reinstall

[ken18]

Initially installed Debian without trouble (with three partitions, one for the filesystem, one for user files, and one for swap) and after installing some updates, iceweasel would no longer launch. After trying to uninstall/reinstall iceweasel and xulrunner the destop would no longer launch. So,I reinstalled debian by deleting the filesystem partition and reinstalling. Now, after login in I get the following error:

Could not update ICEauthority file /home/username/.ICEauthority

and all I can do is logout or shutdown. What am I doing wrong?

[mardybear]

Ensure the file is owned by the user, not root or another user. You can check with the following command.

Code: Select all

ls -al .ICEauthority

IMO is not generally good to recycle an old home account for a new install as it can be problematic. My preference would be to back up any critical data from the /home/username folder onto different media, reinstall the system creating a new user and then selectively replacing critical data.

[ken18]

OK, I did the install over again but deleted all 3 partitions at the beginning of the install. The odd thing is all my user files are still here after the install was complete, even though I deleted the partitiions during the install. Does this makes sense? I'd expected all my user files to be gone.

[mardybear]

Never re-installed Debian so don't know for sure, but it's doubtful that the installer would/could re-use the old /home/user account during a re-install...especially since you reportedly deleted the old partitions during the reinstall process. Depending on the desktop environment and software installed you will always have some dot ( . ) configuration files created in your /home/user/ directory after a fresh install - that's normal. Just check the file dates to confirm whether they are new/old, from your previous install or the fresh install.

When installing a new system i always use a liveCD and run gparted to remove old partitions, re-partition and set up a new file system. Then i know for certain it's going to be a fresh install. If this is too much trouble during a re-install, then you could more easily just have created a different user account/user name so you know it's a fresh /home/user pathway.

If you have doubts regarding the re-use/recycling of your /home/user files then simply create a new user account and login as the new user. You can then decide whether you need any of the data in the old user account or can simply remove the suspect user account. If you want to add or delete accounts via terminal, the commands are adduser and deluser. Read the man(ual) pages in a terminal via the following commands for more information. Depending on your desktop environment, you probabably also have a GUI method to add and delete user accounts.

Code: Select all

man adduser

Code: Select all

man deluser

[ken18]

Never re-installed Debian so don't know for sure, but it's doubtful that the installer would/could re-use the old /home/user account during a re-install...especially since you reportedly deleted the old partitions during the reinstall process

Yep, seemed goofy to me. I don't think I can trust it. This is strange, because I clearly deleted all 3 partitions and re-created them from free space during the install. To be sure I used the exact same sizes and order of the partitions, but I wouldn't think this should matter. Deleting a partition is deleting a partition, sheesh. Since I already backed up my user files and re-installed, I may as well do it again (carefully) to see if I get the same result. If so, I'll conclude there is some sort of bug in the debian install process and use gparted to delete the partitions before the install. Thanks for the tips.