Problems with permissions on home directories at IG/PG nodes

[Niky Riga]

Hi,

It has happened to me twice in the past week that a node came up with a
custom image and one of the users could not login because their home
directory was owned by another user.

Case 1:
slice: doneillTmixTest
AM: PG-Utah
Image: urn:publicid:IDN+emulab.net+image+pgeni-gpolab-bbn-com:tmixTutorial

Details: directory doneill was owned by nriga
http://grab.by/uZbA
I have manually fixed this case

Case 2:
slice: sdxdemo
AM: NW-IG
Image:
urn:publicid:IDN+instageni.northwestern.edu+image+ch-geni-net:nowcastOVS

Details: directory nriga was owned by dbhat, we also fixed the problem
manually

Any idea why this is happening?

Thanks,
Niky

[Leigh Stoller]

> It has happened to me twice in the past week that a node came up with a
> custom image and one of the users could not login because their home
> directory was owned by another user.
>
> Case 1:
> slice: doneillTmixTest
> AM: PG-Utah
> Image:
> urn:publicid:IDN+emulab.net+image+pgeni-gpolab-bbn-com:tmixTutorial

This image was based on Ubuntu 10, which is very very old. We no longer
maintain this image, and I strongly suggest that it not be used. But see
below.

> Details: directory doneill was owned by nriga
> http://grab.by/uZbA
> I have manually fixed this case
>
> Case 2:
> slice: sdxdemo
> AM: NW-IG
> Image: urn:publicid:IDN+instageni.northwestern.edu+image+ch-geni-net:nowcastOVS

There is a bug in the code that deletes old directories. It is possible
that it can be fixed when used in a XEN vm (in dom0 before boot), but in
general the image will need to be recreated after the bug is fixed.

I will try to work on this today, but the quick fix you can make on your
own is to create a sliver running the image, delete all of the directories
in /users, and then take a new snapshot of the image.

Leigh