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Everytime I want to add a user, users & group uses long time, then I get can't save error. It is a brand new installation, so it should work. Anyway I looked at the permissions for the hidden files, ls -lA, and noticed that some only had r-r-r, so I

sudo chmod -R a+rw /home/user

Option a+rw to be sure, o+rw would normally do. Every item now have at least rw permission. Still users & groups refuse to save the data. SEEMS, because if I close and reopens, the user just added now is there.

If I try to add a group, even worse: I tried to add Villa, and get back: (translated by me, german): Illegal characters in the group name.

Seems pretty buggy

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  • I was going to advise you to clarify your question, by telling us which utility you are using to create users/groups, and if it's a GUI utility, adding a screenshot, or if it's a command line, showing the exact command and error. Also, is the use actually getting created or not? But, you've wrecked permissions in your home directory and I would advise you to reinstall unless you want to spend a lot of time fixing it or you really don't care about having horribly insecure permissions
    – Zanna ♦
    Sep 11, 2017 at 10:58
  • Oh thanks. Yes I use the built in User&Groups, that's why I wrote it with big leading letters. Everything works fine with terminal/CLI. Only the GUI User manager makes troubles. And this is the result of a fresh installation, so a reinstall will not help very much
    – DJNJ
    Sep 11, 2017 at 11:25
  • Now it also come with some system error (no further declaration) on startup, so I will take the time to download another ISO of MATE 16.04, and reinstall.
    – DJNJ
    Sep 11, 2017 at 11:37
  • I was suggesting reinstallation only to fix the broken permissions - we could review the situation after that. Since you are reinstalling, please update your question to let us know the result. And I strongly suggest you don't make stuff world writeable or use the -R flag to chmod unless doing so in a limited scenario where you know exactly what the correct file mode is for everything that will be affected
    – Zanna ♦
    Sep 11, 2017 at 11:53

1 Answer 1

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I did as suggested and reinstalled Ubuntu Mate 16.04.3, after downloading it again. The user handling is now ok. The problem with the groups is also simple: Linux doesn't like capital letters here, something with regular expressions, which I newer cared about, and neither had time to. i simply follow that rule from now on (I think some will say bad argument. I am aware. but if I have to learn all Linux at once, I can't produce anything, and I am front-end programmer, not admin, even if I have to).

Thanks for the advices. It is not quite clear to me how it can work handling users when the files are read only. That was the problem in the beginning. But as for now I see the case as solved, thanks again.

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  • I sat the permissions of .Xauthority to rw-r---r---
    – DJNJ
    Sep 12, 2017 at 13:04

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