[LarryDC]

Dream Linux 3.5 is my main distro.  I admittedly guess as to what apps do.  I will not anymore. Always cat or view any script before running it ... especially as root!

If you have any directories below /home, do NOT run users-admin_fix.rb.  If, like me, you did have such directories, and do run the script, you will NOT have any directories left afterwards, as I now don't.

Running a multi distro grub, I keep different users from the distinct distros on the same home partition by simply changing the final letter of the user name. 26 is way more than I need.  I also have a common storage partition mounted as /home/large. It is now empty.  Unfortunately, I also had a whole vfat data partition mounted as /home/win_d which is now empty. 

The script serves a good purpose, just not one suited to my installation.  So if you have any directory or folder below /home, beware. 

Since no one else has reported anything about this, my use of the /home partition is apparently not common.  All the better.

[richs-lxh]

Thanks for posting the warning Larry. Incidentally, why did you run the script?

Incidentally, for others, this is the part of the script which removes any directory in the /Home folder which belongs to a user not listed in the passwd file:

Code:

rm -rf /home/# {user}"

[LarryDC]

Incidentally, why did you run the script?

I was trying to burn an .iso via Brasero as a user.  It would not show anything writable in either my R/W dvd drive nor when I put the blank DC in my R/W cd drive.  I thought it might be user group membership, which it was.

I did my usual user[Tab] to see what came up.  when I saw there was a ruby "-fix" script. I remembered the 3 different easy-inst* scripts and, without checking those powerful final lines of the script, ran it.

By the way, Vector Linux also uses /home to locate a valuable (I have to reinstall the distro it now.) ftp (/home/ftp) directory.  I always wanted to do some ruby scripts.  If I get a chance, I'll try and write the code necessary to insert into nelsongs script that would list the subdirectories about to be deleted and ask for confirmation before proceeding. 

Though it is way beyond me, what would really make it an excellent script would be making that list a picklist of the directories that you wanted to keep, i.e., those that you know you DO NOT want to be deleted.

[richs-lxh]

The thing is, when you make a remix distribution, you don't want your /home directory and all it's contents available for everybody to see, hence the reason they get deleted before the creation of the Live CD structure, leaving only Dreamer.

Remastersys also does this when "dist" option is chosen, which when run on an installed system can also have the same effect.

At least we have learned that we don't just run any script without checking what it does first. I've done it as well while building distros, so don't be to hard on yourself, and thanks for posting the warning.

rich