users-admin lies about changing home directory for active users
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
GST |
Confirmed
|
Undecided
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Unassigned | ||
gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu) |
Triaged
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Low
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Unassigned |
Bug Description
Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools
The user-admin tools allows you to change the home directory for a user in the advanced tab of user properties but when you close the tool it fails to update /etc/passwd! If it's not intended to work this option should be greyed out, otherwise it should work...
I encountered this after installing a fresh karmic on a two-user system with a separate /home partition (previously running karmic beta). I wanted to restore one of the old user accounts but had neglected to preserve the passwd files so thought I'd just create a new user with the same name. The tool complained that the home directory already existed for that user so I created it with a different home dir instead. Afterwards when I tried to change the home dir to what it should have been it appeared to work in the GUI but had no effect.
This whole faff could have been avoided if the tool gave me the option to use the existing home dir when re-creating the user (after all, I know what I'm doing).
Regards,
Robert
Changed in gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu): | |
status: | Fix Released → Triaged |
Thanks for the report. Are you able to modify any settings at all? Is your system up-to-date? I reckon this is a duplicate of bug 463353, which has been fixed recently.
About reusing an already existing home directory: you know what you're doing, but the program has to make sure 1) the directory is owned by the new user, and 2) if we change the permissions so that's the case, we don't break the home directory of another user, in case it's shared - and then, what to do? I'd like to get this fixed in the next release, but that's not so simple, as you can see.