[sclug] Making user ID common to dual-boot distros

[Neil Haughton]

Keith,

>
> Subject:
> Re: [sclug] Sychronising User accounts across distros
> From:
> Keith Edmunds <keith at midnighthax.com>
> Date:
> Fri, 21 Jan 2005 18:42:34 +0000
> To:
> sclug at sclug.org.uk
>
> To:
> sclug at sclug.org.uk
>
>
>On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 18:32:56 +0000
>Neil Haughton <n.a.haughton at bigfoot.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I've edited my /etc/passwd 
>>file in one distro to make the userID match that in the other distro, 
>>but there was something about chown'ing something that I can't remember, 
>>    
>>
>
>You need to make sure that you have the same group too, which is the fourth
>field in the /etc/passwd entry (the user id is the third field). Then make
>sure that your home directory has those permissions. The easy way, assuming
>your username is me and your groups is mygroup:
>
>	chown -R me.mygroup /home/me
>
>That should do it, but if you have problems then come back here.
>
>Keith
>
>  
>

Okay, under Ubuntu I edited my /etc/passwd and /etc/group files to have 
account and group ID's matching my Mandrake versions, then did chown -R 
neil.neil /home/neil . Now When I start up Ubuntu Gnome does show my 
neil account on the login screen. Fortunately I have a 'spare' account, 
but somtthing still isn't right.
Here're are my Ubuntu /etc/passwd and /etc/group files

/etc/passwd:

neil:x:501:501:neil haughton,,,:/home/neil:/bin/bash

/etc/group

neil:x:501:neil

By way of comparision, here are the matching lines from my Mandrake files:

/etc/passwd

neil:x:501:501:neil:/home/neil:/bin/bash

/etc/group


neil:x:501:

There is a slight difference, but what is the significance of this?

Hope you can help

Neil.