passwd file problems

[Aaron Konstam <akonstam trinity edu>]

Recently someone asked about changing the uid for a user in the passwd file so
it matched that on another machine. That was preventing him form logging on. I
admit I thought the person was confused. Well I have been taught my lesson.

I am running RH 6.1 and RH 7.0 on the same machine but in different partitions.
On the 6.1 system I was uid 100 on the 7.0 system I had been defaulted to 500.

Ok I thought that is simple while in the 7.0 systemI changed the uid in the
passwd file did a chown on
the home directory. I even in the end remembered to change the ownership of the
orbit-akonstam file.

When you do that (that is make any change in the passwd entries) you can log in
as that user but when you try to change any characteristic of sawfish the
system says sayfish is not running. In .xsession-errors you get output like
below:

SESSION_MANAGER=local/Moof:/tmp/.ICE-unix/1152
Xlib:  extension "XINERAMA" missing on display ":0.0".
Owner of /tmp/.sawmill-akonstam is not the current user
subshell.c: couldn't get terminal settings: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Somewhere in the gnome system the information from the passwd entries are
retained. The ownership of the .sawmill-akonstam is the problem.

1. Where is this information data-based (to invent a word)?

2. How do we fix this?

3. If it isn't sawfish (which the Gnome-Control window says is the current
window manager) what window manager am I running?

-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam         
Computer Science
Trinity University
715 Stadium Dr.
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

telephone: (210)-999-7484
email:akonstam@trinity.edu