[workaround] home directory re-owned by root on boot

quequotion · 2022-11-17 14:07:04

Long time no see!

I made a mistake. Something told me I didn't have enough permissions and I ended up running

sudo systemctl --user <something>

.

This messed up some ownerships in my home directory, but I was able to correct them.

Upon rebooting however, I found my home directory itself inaccessible, apparently now owned by root.

I can change the ownership and log in, but every time I reboot it's owned by root again.

I checked between boots with an install medium, the ownership is correct between boots.

It's being set to root after powerup, before lightdm (I am currently using autologin, but it dumps me back to the prompt because my home directory is owned by root).

Let me know if there are any other details you are interested in.

Edit: worked around. Since ages ago, I've been binding my home directory to root's home directory. I have some reasons for doing that. Dbus never liked it, but it otherwise has never been an issue until today. Removing the bind from fstab stopped the constant re-owning of my home directory by root. I very much miss the way things were, but oh well.

Last edited by quequotion (2022-11-17 14:18:59)

ThatGuy64 · 2022-11-18 16:41:44

Here's a way without that workaround:

cd /usr/local/bin
sudo nano rechown.sh

IN NANO:

chown *user* /home/*user*
chmod a+x+r /home/*user*

EXIT NANO (Ctrl + X, then Y, then Enter)

chmod a+x rechown.sh
cd /etc/systemd/system
sudo nano chmodhomedir.service

IN NANO:

[Unit]
Description="chowns home directory"

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/bin/bash /usr/local/bin/rechown.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

EXIT NANO

sudo systemctl enable chmodhomedir

On reboot, it should always rechown your home

Last edited by ThatGuy64 (2022-11-18 16:42:32)

Arch Linux

#1 2022-11-17 14:07:04

[workaround] home directory re-owned by root on boot

#2 2022-11-18 16:41:44

Re: [workaround] home directory re-owned by root on boot

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