Ubuntu, lost user privileges

Well I have now installed Mint Cinnamon and am now busy tweaking it.

I would like to thank everyone that offered help in trying to resolve the above issue I had with Ubuntu it is greatly appreciated.
 


Well I have now installed Mint Cinnamon and am now busy tweaking it.

It might be prudent to make a nice clean backup of an untouched installation so that you can just restore it when it breaks.

Then make incremental backups as you tweak because tweaking things is how we break things. Mint will run forever, so long as we don't go screwing with it. Of course, we're geeks and nerds, so we're going to go screwing with it. This is why backups are important time savers.
 
i know it was mentioned in the thread a few times, but that's what i use Timeshift (it comes pre-installed with mint) for on my mint xfce and other systems. just in case i make a mistake with a system setting or package install. i pair that with luckyBackup to keep track of personal files in my home directory that are excluded from Timeshift by default.
 
Dave,

Once you get Cinnamon the way you like...Software...Printer...Browsers etc...it's a good idea to create an Image of you system with either Foxclone https://www.foxclone.org/ or Redorescue https://sourceforge.net/projects/redobackup/files/

If anything like this or worse would happen...it's a simple matter to re-image the Drive and nothing is lost. You can create an image anytime and doesn't take long...I do this every few months. Both Foxclone and Redorescue have a verifying tool so you know the image you create is good.
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i know it was mentioned in the thread a few times, but that's what i use Timeshift (it comes pre-installed with mint) for on my mint xfce and other systems. just in case i make a mistake with a system setting or package install. i pair that with luckyBackup to keep track of personal files in my home directory that are excluded from Timeshift by default.
I used Timeshift on the basic install then again when I had installed all my applications.

The thing is with this even if I had of used it on the Ubuntu issue it would not have worked as it also requires your password to run. With my issue this was the problem as the username and password were not working for anything like this.

I have created a second Admin user not sure if this would have worked with the Ubuntu issue however.
 
Dave,

Once you get Cinnamon the way you like...Software...Printer...Browsers etc...it's a good idea to create an Image of you system with either Foxclone https://www.foxclone.org/ or Redorescue https://sourceforge.net/projects/redobackup/files/

If anything like this or worse would happen...it's a simple matter to re-image the Drive and nothing is lost. You can create an image anytime and doesn't take long...I do this every few months. Both Foxclone and Redorescue have a verifying tool so you know the image you create is good.
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Well this I am going to do for sure. Up until now it was not a huge issue installing Linux again as I was still getting into it so no real data was lost. The few data files I did have I had backed them up just in case I ran into an issue.
 
I used Timeshift on the basic install then again when I had installed all my applications.

The thing is with this even if I had of used it on the Ubuntu issue it would not have worked as it also requires your password to run. With my issue this was the problem as the username and password were not working for anything like this.

I have created a second Admin user not sure if this would have worked with the Ubuntu issue however.
it's been a while since i tested it, but i believe Timeshift can be run from a usb. in that case the lost access you had on your main system shouldn't have been an obstacle.

Timeshift development has been taken over by the linux mint team, but this was the original developer's page where they briefly discuss being able to use it from a live usb: https://teejeetech.com/timeshift/
If the main system is not bootable, then it is possible to boot from an Ubuntu Live CD, install Timeshift on the live system, and restore a snapshot on the main system.
 
Once you get Cinnamon the way you like...Software...Printer...Browsers etc...it's a good idea to create an Image of you system with either Foxclone
I downloaded it and was going to give it a go but it seems I need a larger USB drive as I now only have 4GB drives spare and it does not seem to work on these. I did have a larger (suspect) USB and managed to make that a bookable drive but it seems being suspect I picked up issues with that one.

So once I have a larger capacity USB I am going to give this another go.
 
...but i believe Timeshift can be run from a usb.

It can, but only for purposes of restoring an existing snapshot, not for taking it.

However, for restoring, the live version would not require the use of sudo.

Wizard
 
I downloaded it and was going to give it a go but it seems I need a larger USB drive as I now only have 4GB drives spare and it does not seem to work on these. I did have a larger (suspect) USB and managed to make that a bookable drive but it seems being suspect I picked up issues with that one.

So once I have a larger capacity USB I am going to give this another go.

Flash Drives start at 16GB these days...Foxclone ISO is 636.5MB and Redorescue is 726.5MB. You can put them on separate Flash Drives or install Ventoy on one and put both ISOs on it like this...
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The Flash Drive shown is 32GB...you'll also need an External HDD to store your image...my last image was 140GB...hope this helps.
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Also, just a bit of trivia/userful bits of knowledge, usernames can't have capital letters (AFAIK - no distro has ever let me use caps, as far as I recall - though I suppose I stopped trying after a while).

I prefer my username to be like it is here - all caps. Alas, this goes way back to when we used dumb terminals. I don't think there's any particular technical reason why we can't use them now. They're just not allowed.

You weren't holding your mouth the right way. Quite a number of distros allow for uppercase, but I could not give you an exact figure.

MX LInux is one.

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The user can try it with an installer and if it does not like it, it will provide a message.

Wizard
 
You weren't holding your mouth the right way. Quite a number of distros allow for uppercase, but I could not give you an exact figure.

Nice! I'm kinda surprised that they allow it, as it goes against history! I couldn't think of a legit technical reason to not allow it in modern times.

Though, you know, I don't think I'd checked that in ages. I just kinda assumed it was still true.
 
All I know is if my user password is sam and I type Sam I'm screwed.
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The Flash Drive shown is 32GB...you'll also need an External HDD to store your image...my last image was 140GB...hope this helps.

Yeah I will need to get a new flash drive that has more space on it. I do have the one with my Mint Bootup on it but I want to keep that one as it is.

I have the external HD waiting and ready and it has loads of space on it for the image.
 
Another thing with the issue I had on Ubuntu that I found interesting looking at it from a Windows perspective was the following.

When I was at the Ubuntu login screen it told me that user dave could not be found. I could however still log into it but had no sudo privileges using the normal password. What I could not understand was I could still see all the documents that I had created before this happened. Now on Windows you would never be able to view documents created by another user as it seemed what I was when my original user could not be found.
 
Yeah I will need to get a new flash drive that has more space on it. I do have the one with my Mint Bootup on it but I want to keep that one as it is.

I have the external HD waiting and ready and it has loads of space on it for the image.

You don't need another Flash Drive...that's only if you want to install Ventoy on it as this allows you to put a number of ISOs on it.

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You don't need another Flash Drive...that's only if you want to install Ventoy on it as this allows you to put a number of ISOs on it.

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Not sure how I will then get around this as I have Linux Mint bootable setup on the only other spare large flash drive and I would imagine I would then need to kill that to setup Foxclone.
 
Not sure how I will then get around this as I have Linux Mint bootable setup on the only other spare large flash drive and I would imagine I would then need to kill that to setup Foxclone.

Most Flash Drives these days start at 16GB and the Mint ISO is 2.7GB...if you put it on one Flash Drives you can't put anything else on it...but it you install Ventoy on that Flash Drive you can put both Mint Cinnamon and Foxclone as shown is post 31...the choice is yours.
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