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I had Ubuntu 14.10 installed, but somehow after installing updates my screen started flickering, I could not access anything so I had to reinstall Ubuntu.

First of all, I had separate partitions for the system and /home, since I've heard that this is a good idea, you can reinstall without losing your account and files.

But, after installation finished I expected to see my old user-accounts in the login window but not, nothing there. So I had to login with the new account that I created during installation.

After login in eith that account I can browse to the /home directory and there i can see my accounts, locked with a key-sign.

Maybe its important to mention that I had to install 14.04, not 14.10, could that be the issue?

How do I reactivate my old accounts?

Evandro Silva
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jse71
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  • A reinstall overwrites data - if you did a reinstall and didn't salvage your /home/ directory via the liveusb your ability to recover is diminished. – Thomas Ward Jan 20 '15 at 14:36
  • With all respect but i believe you are wrong. As i said i had separate partitions for the system itself, and the user accounts. -

    3 partitions: 1 - /root 2 - /home 3 - Swap. -

    The /home partitonshould only be deleted/overwritten if i marked it as "format" in the installation window. -

    And, i can still see the accounts in the "/Home" folder.

     – jse71 Jan 20 '15 at 14:42
  • your user data wasn't stored in /home - your actual user database and such is in a file that was likely on the root dir - therefore you still need to try and recover a file on the system - since it's on the / partition that may be a little tricky or impossible - you could always readd the user and do all the chown and such to reclaim owhership of the directory – Thomas Ward Jan 20 '15 at 14:53
  • Ok, i still got a lot to learn i understand. I thought the whole point with a separate "/home-partition" was to keep it separated from the system so i could just upgrade or reinstall the system without that having any effect on the user-accounts. Thanks for your time and reply though :) – jse71 Jan 20 '15 at 15:00
  • that retains the user's data, but there's other files which manage user passwords, group ownership, etc. which are more critical for keeping the user data itself – Thomas Ward Jan 20 '15 at 15:36
  • Ok. I just thought that separate partitions for the system and the users was a genuis feature in Linux, but after searching for hours now i cant find any way to reinstall Ubuntu and just log in to your old account, smoothly, so i guess its not that great after all. You should think that the old accounts would appear in the login window after installation. Or maybe thats the way its ment to be but i did something wrong during the installation ? Ive heard that your settings and everything would be saved. Actually, i noticed that the installer, non successful, tried to install the apps i had. – jse71 Jan 20 '15 at 16:14

1 Answers1

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If your data in filesystem /home is not deleted, after you reinstall Ubuntu, you can
recovery your data as following:
1) edit your /etc/fstab, add an entry to specify how to mount your /home filesystem
2) chown ${newUser}:${newGroup} -R /home/${oldUser}
3) logout/login

Actually, I didn't try that, but it may work.

zhangjie
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  • Thank you, i may try this. But if THIS is the only way to log into your accounts after reinstalling/upgrading your system, them i may install using the common way. Editing my fstab everytime is just to much hassle. But, i still suspect there is a easier way to do this. How awesome wouldnt it be if you could reinstall and log in again as nothing had happend ? :) – jse71 Jan 20 '15 at 16:18
  • Another thing, and i ask here since im new to this forum and not sure about the rules. I now know that extended discussions are not wanted. But, since i "lost" my accounts, i am now not able to access some files in another HD that i have. I "dont have the admin rights" or someting like that. Should i start a new post about that ? Or is it ok to keep this thread going ? How do i get access to my files on this other drive ? – jse71 Jan 20 '15 at 16:31