Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

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Grumpus
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Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Grumpus »

Had opened nautilus in admin mode doing some simple root maintenance, dumping unneeded files etc and found a manual in html which i needed to look at and print.
Don't Open a Local HTML page with Firefox by Clicking on the file while having opened nautilus in admin mode and accepting "Open with Firefox" IT WILL WIPE YOUR PROFILE AND ALL SETTINGS, INCLUDING RE-ESTABLISHING OUTDATED CERTIFICATES
It takes a while to make things right again and it will affect CTR, Setting Sanity, NoScript and probably a whole lot of extensions and add-ons.
I've been doing this for a while and had this happen once before but never got the message.
Maybe it will save someone some grief. #-o
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barbaz
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by barbaz »

Grumpus wrote:Had opened nautilus in admin mode
How were you running it as root?
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Grumpus »

No, terminal command using sudo to open Nautilus. For some reason is less grief than gksudo, don't know why. System was offline.
Best guess is the admin status of nautilus at the time opened the root Firefox instead o0f user, root version is usually left dormant unless someone goes in through a root login and changes preferences.
Some might not understand there are two versions of Firefox on Ubuntu Linux systems. One root, one user.
Access through sudo is as admin privilege but requires a password; is different than root login which requires no passwords to manage functions.
Best guess is root version was installed somehow in place of user version.
Peculiar thing is I found Sirius radio in the /edit/preferences/advanced/ allowed for off site storage panel.
Dumped it and searched the system for some reference of it and couldn't find anything. No related packages, no in depth search, nothing.
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barbaz
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by barbaz »

If your user account's Firefox profile was messed up, and you ran

Code: Select all

sudo nautilus
then, to avoid this type of disaster, you need to run

Code: Select all

sudo -H nautilus
The -H option points $HOME to /root instead of leaving it as your home directory.
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Grumpus
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Grumpus »

I wasn't using the home directory, thanks for the -H though, was working in the root directory by loading nautilus using sudo plain.
Closing nautilus closes the root directory and user home directory un-harmed. Only Firefox was screwed up when opening a file in the root directory.
I'm finding a whole lot of strange packet traffic since the event from all sorts of Latino organizations, radio stations and this Sirius Radio thing looks to have been part of the problem. Don't know where it came from.
Found F5radio and a number of Google related radio crap trying to load on the system.
In one case looks like something was trying to play some kind of adults only Latino radio music through the system.
Really weird? This might all belong in the tin foil thread.
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Grumpus
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Grumpus »

How old am I, I just did it again this morning, and with Sea Monkey as well when It wouldn't show the text in Firefox.
It's all the fault of the sixties, darn hippies.
Time to find the ice flow.
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Sector11
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Sector11 »

AHA! You are older than you avatar suggests.

You be like me, to quote a dear old friend:

My forgetter is getting better!
- Linda Davis
- - may she rest in peace.
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Grumpus »

Double post - Ignore
Last edited by Grumpus on November 26th, 2016, 3:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Grumpus »

@Sector11 - Considerably. ;)
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Sector11 »

^ is that like considerably++, 'cuz there's 2 of 'em?
From reading a few posts/threads here I put you in the decade I'm heading into! :)
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Grumpus »

Accidental double post, sometimes page doesn't refresh quicker or takes longer than normal.
It's a matter of blind faith sometimes.
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Sector11 »

I knew that, but it was too tempting to resist.

It's like an OS error that might get you when not thinking ... It's a forum error when you type faster than a forum can respond. :D
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Frenzie »

barbaz wrote:If your user account's Firefox profile was messed up, and you ran

Code: Select all

sudo nautilus
then, to avoid this type of disaster, you need to run

Code: Select all

sudo -H nautilus
The -H option points $HOME to /root instead of leaving it as your home directory.
gksu(do) also handles XAUTHORITY and some other environment variables like DISPLAY on top of that, see, e.g., http://askubuntu.com/questions/11760/wh ... 1766#11766 (which also offers the command find $HOME -not -user $USER -exec ls -lad {} \; to possibly fix Grumpus' problem).
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Grumpus
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Re: Linux - OS error - might get you when not thinking.

Post by Grumpus »

@Frenzie - thanks. It's one of those things which I've read over and over and for some reason never sticks in the brain fat.
Where I went off the rails is operationally in normal practice opening of nautilus or caja using sudo allows for deletions of files designated as root owned.
Opening them with a root level editor to view before deletion is not necessarily a problem except with certain softwares which don't have a duplicate profile.
The ownership changes were not an issue except when sometimes copying files from some cache sources but a recopy would establish the original ownership.
This seemed for the most part a little more expeditious in the gui outside of a terminal using terminal commands but this was a human laziness error and lack of memory depth on my part. :oops:
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