Copy home to flash drive - it's made my asthma go crazy

[urdrwho5]

Ok I will never, ever, never get it. Why there isn't a GUI way to move your home folder to another device like a flash drive. CP this rsync that and then the attributes have set off a bad asthma attack. For some reason on the laptop I want to copy to won't give me the name of the flash drive. When I write dir /media it gives me the same name as the external drive that was once hooked up to the computer. Plus if I insert two flash drives it still gives the one and only name of the once install external hard drive.

So once again linux has sent me off the edge. So for now I am back on my WIN 7 machine that I can do just about anything with a GUI app. The only time I need to go to CMD is maybe to ipconfig, etc.

[claydoh]

Dolphin does not work?

[urdrwho5]

No. Dolphin won't copy / post everything and when pasting I get an error message. The message is something about not being able to make the folder.
Even kdesudo root access copy / paste of hidden folders is a no-go. I can do some of this if I do it bit, by, bit, by bit. Such as my hidden mozilla file. I may copy the folders but will not go very far in pasting the hierarchy of folders or what is in those folders.

If I copy home and then paste to a flash drive it all won't happen.

Dolphin does not work?

[NickStone]

Is the flash drive big enough?

Also, have you tried the command

cp /home/[user name] /sdb1 -a

[urdrwho5]

Yes flash drive is big enough and I did try that command except I didn't use the -a attribute. I'll give it a try.

I gave it a try and it seems to be working. I'll see if it copies the folder in its entirety.

Is the flash drive big enough?

Also, have you tried the command

cp /home/[user name] /sdb1 -a

[urdrwho5]

Well I just came back to the computer to see how things were going and this is what happened --

john@urdrwho:~$ cp /home/john /sdb1/john -a
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.local/share/Trash/info/libz.so.1.2.8.trashinfo’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.local/share/Trash/info/en_ZA.aff.trashinfo’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.local/share/Trash/info/en_AU.dic.trashinfo’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.local/share/Trash/info/linux-tools-3.13.0-96.trashinfo’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.local/share/Trash/info/en_GB.aff.trashinfo’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.local/share/Trash/info/libgcc_s.so.1.trashinfo’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.local/share/Trash/info/langpack-en-GB@firefox.mozilla.org.xpi.trashinfo’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.local/share/Trash/info/en_ZA.dic.trashinfo’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.local/share/Trash/info/en_AU.aff.trashinfo’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.local/share/Trash/info/en_GB.dic.trashinfo’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.local/share/Trash/info/langpack-en-ZA@firefox.mozilla.org.xpi.trashinfo’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.mozilla/firefox/9ncamm4l.John/crashes/events/37f5fd75-eaa3-6774-13a2d38b-283299df’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.mozilla/firefox/9ncamm4l.John/crashes/events/3a220cf1-b500-85b1-0b659034-5e00e984’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.mozilla/firefox/9ncamm4l.John/saved-telemetry-pings/446297a9-99c5-4c41-b9dd-08380e41da0c’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot create special file ‘/sdb1/john/.mozilla/firefox/9ncamm4l.John/datareporting/archived/2016-10/1476811626842.3ad06bf2-3258-462e-8f8d-c93efe2c6b35.main.jsonlz4’: Operation not permitted
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.mozilla/firefox/Crash Reports/pending/3a220cf1-b500-85b1-0b659034-5e00e984.extra’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.mozilla/firefox/Crash Reports/pending/3a220cf1-b500-85b1-0b659034-5e00e984.dmp’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.mozilla/firefox/Crash Reports/events/33c4303d-ed3e-3e1a-3c0661cd-7e1678c5’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/home/john/.mozilla/firefox/Crash Reports/InstallTime20161107155956’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot access ‘/home/john/.cache/dconf’: Permission denied

The job never was completed.

Yes flash drive is big enough and I did try that command except I didn't use the -a attribute. I'll give it a try.

I gave it a try and it seems to be working. I'll see if it copies the folder in its entirety.

[vinnywright]

what is the user:group on

"/home/john/.cache/dconf"

I think you have files in your ~/ not owned by you

VINNY

[TWPonKubuntu]

Sounds like a permissions problem.

Who has ownership of your home folder? And all the subfolders and content files (which may be different).

On my development system, I have changed ownership to myself (not root) for the entire home folder.

I used Dolphin to do this. Select /home folder, right click->properties->Permissions change Ownership to your username AND toggle the checkbox to "Apply changes to all subfolders and their contents".

If you are trying to do the copy as yourself (not a root), it will disallow copy of folders and files which you do not own.

[edi] Vinny beat me to it...

[claydoh]

One can also use Ark to make a tar archive that will preserve permissions, as well as allow storage on a flash drive formatted with a widows file system, such as fat32 which does not support file and directory permissions.
Backup tools such as backintime may also be useful

[urdrwho5]

Not sure but I am and always have been the only user.

I ended up booting Knoppix and that file manager copied the stuff. There was one message I saw and it said it couldn't create a symbiotic link. For the files inside Mozilla I had to go inside the mozilla file and then copy my user file.

Just for the heck of it I'll check the user group.

what is the user:group on

"/home/john/.cache/dconf"

I think you have files in your ~/ not owned by you

VINNY

[urdrwho5]

I had to get to it by root and using Kate and then I saw this in the top banner --

The file /home/john/.cache/dconf/user was opened with UTF-8 encoding but contained invalid characters.
It is set to read-only mode, as saving might destroy its content.
Either reopen the file with the correct encoding chosen or enable the read-write mode again in the menu to be able to edit it.

In the body of the file there were two triangles and that is it. Not sure what it all means

what is the user:group on

"/home/john/.cache/dconf"

I think you have files in your ~/ not owned by you

VINNY

[jlittle]

"dconf" is Gnome 3 (*) settings system, that uses a binary (that is, not text) database format. Opening a binary format file in Kate gives that kind of error; this has *nothing* to do with your copying problem.

The others have asked about ownership because it's due to common cause of trouble; root, aka the super user, is likely the other user involved, and I guess you've used some Gnome 3 programme with sudo. If I'm right that programme has saved some settings owned by root and not readable by you.

If you want to run some GUI programme with root privileges, in KDE one should use kdesudo not sudo, and in Gnome 3 gksudo. (I'm not sure if kdesudo is good with all Gnome stuff; it would be very gnomish for something to not work.)

A command line way to find such files is

find . -not -readable

though that will throw up broken links (symbolic links that point to nonexistent files) too.

* I suppose this attitude to Gnome 3 is now a bit unfair, but many times bitten, more times shy.

[wizard10000]

...I'm not sure if kdesudo is good with all Gnome stuff

Works just fine.

[urdrwho5]

I think I installed XCFE (plus another one that I can't remember) desktop environment one time and that probably came with Gnome stuff. When I start Dolphin from the terminal I always try and remember to use Kdesudo. I have the laptop I was trying to copy the home folder sitting on another desk. The back-light is out on it ans had to use the desktop monitor to see the things to copy. The laptop is unplugged and maybe I'll find a back-light for it I'm using my wife's Acer. For Christmas our son got her a (new to her) computer so now I have her old laptop.

Now to move "everything me" onto it. It is the next task at hand. My old laptop was running 14.04 LTS and this one is 15 so there may be things in my home folder that I don't want to move onto the Acer.

"dconf" is Gnome 3 (*) settings system, that uses a binary (that is, not text) database format. Opening a binary format file in Kate gives that kind of error; this has *nothing* to do with your copying problem.

The others have asked about ownership because it's due to common cause of trouble; root, aka the super user, is likely the other user involved, and I guess you've used some Gnome 3 programme with sudo. If I'm right that programme has saved some settings owned by root and not readable by you.

If you want to run some GUI programme with root privileges, in KDE one should use kdesudo not sudo, and in Gnome 3 gksudo. (I'm not sure if kdesudo is good with all Gnome stuff; it would be very gnomish for something to not work.)

A command line way to find such files is

find . -not -readable

though that will throw up broken links (symbolic links that point to nonexistent files) too.

* I suppose this attitude to Gnome 3 is now a bit unfair, but many times bitten, more times shy.

[wizard10000]

...When I start Dolphin from the terminal I always try and remember to use Kdesudo.

Someone mentioned it in another thread of yours but installing the root actions service menu may help.

Trying to remember to use kdesudo is admirable; I thought I'd share *why* using sudo for graphical applications is a no-no so maybe it'll help you remember.

sudo without any arguments *does not* inherit root's environment, it uses yours. So - when you use

sudo dolphin

to mess around in your home directory since root's environment is not inherited dolphin writes files owned by root into *your* home directory.

Remember in the other thread when you had a buncha kate configuration owned by root in your home directory? That's a direct result of running kate under sudo - chances are it was called from 'sudo dolphin' since you mentioned you'd never run kate.

You can make sudo use root's environment instead of yours by running 'sudo -i' or 'sudo -H' but if you're gonna have to remember to do that you might as well just use kdesudo

So -

sudo dolphin

is a no-no under any circumstances.

kdesudo dolphin

or

sudo -i dolphin

or

sudo -H dolphin

or

kdesu dbus-launch dolphin

will work, but you should never edit files in your home directory as root. I'm sure you already know this, just explaining why things are the way they are

And if you change any settings (like dolphin or kate) using sudo those changes will be written into *your* home directory and you end up with files owned by root in ~

hope this helps -