Should these /home files be locked?

lw1471 · 2013-09-12 16:10:56

I'm using Xubuntu 13.04 64 bit with all updates applied. I'd thought that files and folders in our /home directories were unlocked unlike root equivalents, but for example /home/[username]/.config/gtk-3.0 has a cross next to it as does Thunar in the same folder. I wouldn't have noticed this if I hadn't wanted to put a file in the gtk-3.0 folder to correct menu shadows as I have when I used to use Gnome.

Is this normal for Xfce/Xubuntu or has something gone wrong?

I was able to insert my file by using gksu Thunar so I'm just really asking about whether my file system is okay.

Thanks.

ToZ · 2013-09-12 16:30:33

/home/[username]/.config/gtk-3.0 should be owned by your userid. It's probably owned by root. The only reason one would want to have it owned by root would be to prevernt userland changes to the file, but in that case, the information should be put in /etc/gtk-3.0. I would suggest changing the ownership of that directory (and the included files) back to your userid. Do you recall how or when the ownership was changed on that directory?

lw1471 · 2013-09-12 18:05:37

I thought so.

Rather than manually use chown and so on I just deleted the suspect folders and files, there weren't many, and rebooted. The then recreated files are not owned by root anymore. I don't know what could have happened.

I have been starting Thunar with sudo thunar to edit a couple of things, instead of gksu thunar - could it be this? I also moved a downloaded gtk theme that was zipped by using sudo mv /home/username/[themefile].zip /usr/hare/themes/ and then going to the folder after typing sudo thunar, to unzip it. Maybe that's an incorrect way to do this although it had seemed to work for many months.

The exact same thing happened on two computers both with the same edition of Xubuntu.

ToZ · 2013-09-12 20:01:24

lw1471 wrote:

I have been starting Thunar with sudo thunar to edit a couple of things, instead of gksu thunar - could it be this?

Possibly. You should always use gksu/gksudo when using graphical applications.

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#1 2013-09-12 16:10:56

Should these /home files be locked?

#2 2013-09-12 16:30:33

Re: Should these /home files be locked?

#3 2013-09-12 18:05:37

Re: Should these /home files be locked?

#4 2013-09-12 20:01:24

Re: Should these /home files be locked?

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