[ale] Access problems

[Ben Phillips]

> then i type in the chmod -R g+rwX /home/dist
> then press enter. no errors come up, so I am presuming this worked correctly.

To make sure, type ls -l /home/dist
The files should have -rw-rw-r-- on the left, then denethor and mudcoders
in the next couple of columns.  (In that order.)

> then I try to chown -R denethor:mudcoders /home/dist
> 
> this is where it comes up no valid group..

That's strange.  And no, you should never have to reboot a linux machine. 
On my machine I can type (as root):

echo dickweeds::1254:pynk,tool >> /etc/group
                                     (adding the line to /etc/group)
chown -R pynk:dickweeds /home/tool
ls -al /home/tool

(and it spits out...)

total 18
drwx------   3 pynk     dickweed     1024 Jul 28 08:58 ./
drwxr-xr-x  15 root     root         1024 Jul 10 17:38 ../
-rw-r--r--   1 pynk     dickweed      358 Jun 12 01:31 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--   1 pynk     dickweed       34 Mar 23 13:30 .less
-rw-r--r--   1 pynk     dickweed      114 Mar 23 13:30 .lessrc
-rw-r--r--   1 pynk     dickweed    10326 Apr 20 18:17 .pinerc
drwx------   2 pynk     dickweed     1024 Apr 20 18:17 mail/
-rw-r--r--   1 pynk     dickweed       34 Jul 28 08:58 temp

                               ^  (the s'es are cut off by column width)

Assuming pynk and tool are valid users, and the directory /home/tool
exists, there shouldn't be any problem with this.

> Hmm, now I seem to be
> having a problem with my server rebooting itself continually *sigh* any info
> oyu can give would be great.

This sounds a lot more serious to me.  I've never seen that happen.  What
does it say before it reboots?


                       Ben Phillips <pynk at cc.gatech.edu>
              Not that I think I'm God.  What a cliche.  I don't
              even want to be God.  I just want to feel like him.
                               - Lee Moler, "Suicide Note"