Access Denied to USB Memory Stick

glmarsh · #1 3rd June 2012, 01:31 AM

I just upgraded from F14 to F17 and before doing so I backed up my home directory on a usb memory stick. Now that I have completed the installation I want to re-create my home directory from the usb memory stick but I can not due to a permission/ownership conflict which exists between me as I had been defined under F14 verses F17. When I try to access the memory stick it says the owner is "500 - user #500" where as if I check my properties in a file directory under F17 I am recognized as owner "gary - Gary Marsh". So my question is pretty simple.... Has anyone else experienced this problem and how do I change the permissions on the memory stick such that I can access the data?

Thanks in advance,

jpollard · #2 3rd June 2012, 01:42 AM

restore the files as root (depending on how you backed them up).

If all you did was something like a "cp -r", then root can copy them back. You might consider using --preserve=mode,timestamps to change the owner. If it is a simple ownership, it may be simpler to just do a "chown -R owner.group ..." in your home directory as root.

This is because F17 changed the default starting UID for user accounts from 500 to 1000. So when you created your login on F17 it was assigned the UID of 1000, where you had 500 before.

glmarsh · #3 3rd June 2012, 04:17 AM

Thanks JPollard for your reply. So walk me through this quickly... Previously I used the Desktop file application to copy from my hard drive to the usb scan drive so I didn't have to address mounting and all of the low levels stuff. The other odd thing is I am unable to log on as root but if I start a terminal I can su - to root and it accepts my root password. Is this another anomaly of F17? So lets stick with the terminal for a moment... So I did a fdisk -l and determined that /dev/sdf1 is my usb scandisk. I did a "mount /dev/sdf1 /mnt" to mount the device and I performed a "chown -hRc gary:gary /mnt" to change the ownership and group of all the files on the scandisk. BTW it takes quite a while to do this on a 16Gig scandisk but yahoooo it works.

Thanks again.

glmarsh

george_toolan · #4 3rd June 2012, 10:32 AM

Root should not be able to login directly. This is a security feature so people who are trying to get root access have to guess gary's password and username first ;-)

jpollard · #5 3rd June 2012, 12:58 PM

A disabled GUI root login isn't new to F17, but has been there since at least F14, unless the configuration was changed and forgotten about. IF it was changed then it would have been carried through the preupgrade path, as the original UID configurations were carried.

Root usage of the GUI is not recommended as it is MUCH too easy to destroy the system accidentally.