System going mad; efficient way to recover?

[datruche]

Porteus is KISS, we know that.
Though maybe certainly not that KISS

$ cat /etc/{passwd,group} # *full* output:

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    sshd:x:33:33:sshd:/:
    sshd::33:sshd

Hey, WTH is that? Also I've been login as user and root , and working untill today. How's that even possible?
$ sudo cmd

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sudo: unknown uid 1001: who are you?
Je n'ai pas de nom !@porteus:

Context:
- Arround New Year I copied a working if slow Porteus on a faster SanDisk USB stick.
- Few days ago I installed x2go via usm, and launched sshd.
- Note I never ever touched the OS system files, other than these: /etc/fstab (which had a duplicate entry for swap), /etc/smartd.conf, /proc/sys/vm/swapiness. Arch's my main OS for quite some years, and stability is part of Porteus' charm. Great! since am away from my desktop with an old Atom box to work).

Some more details.

1) Part of /etc was bleach-cleaned at some point:

$ ls -lthra /etc/ (look at passwd* and group* sizes):

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    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0 6,6K janv.  6 13:32 smartd.conf~
    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0 6,7K janv.  6 14:00 smartd.conf
    drwxr-xr-x  3 0    7   16 janv.  9 02:36 cups/
    drwxr-xr-x  7 0    0   29 janv.  9 03:07 gconf/
    drwxr-xr-x  2 0    0   30 janv.  9 14:03 profile.d/
    drwxr-xr-x  2 0    0 4,0K janv. 13 00:48 usm/
    lrwxrwxrwx  1 0    0   32 janv. 13 18:09 localtime-copied-from -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Paris
    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0 3,0K janv. 13 18:09 localtime
    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0  122 janv. 13 18:09 hardwareclock
    drwxrwxrwx 76 0    0  280 janv. 13 18:09 ../
    drwxr-xr-x  2 0    0   60 janv. 13 18:09 lxdm/
    -rw-------  1 0    0  512 janv. 13 18:09 random-seed
    drwxr-xr-x  2 0    0  260 janv. 13 18:09 ssh/
    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0   45 janv. 13 18:09 adjtime
    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0   76 janv. 13 18:09 resolv.conf
    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0 1,5K janv. 13 18:13 fstab
    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0   19 janv. 13 19:33 shadow           «---
    drwxr-xr-x 12 0    0   30 janv. 13 19:33 rc.d/
    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0   21 janv. 13 19:33 passwd           «---
    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0   14 janv. 13 19:33 group           «---
    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0  612 janv. 13 19:34 mtab
    -rw-r--r--  1 0    0  63K janv. 13 19:37 ld.so.cache

2) Some of the user's $HOME gets chowned to root:root at each boot.

$ ll /home/

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    total 8
    drwxr-xr-x 23 guest guest 4096 Jan 12 03:22 guest/
    drwxr-xr-x 24 root  root  4096 Jan 12 16:08 kozaki/           «---

# find /home/kozaki -user root

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    /home/kozaki/.cache
    /home/kozaki/.cache/sessions
    /home/kozaki/.cache/mozilla
    /home/kozaki/.cache/mozilla/firefox
    /home/kozaki/.cache/mozilla/firefox/xnxnxnxnxn.default
    /home/kozaki/.cache/mozilla/firefox/xnxnxnxnxn.default/thumbnails
    find: `/home/kozaki/.cache/moonchild productions/pale moon/xnxnxnxnxn.default/thumbnails/db2e258a61b7a134d0b9c9d62de48711.png': Input/output error
    find: `/home/kozaki/.cache/moonchild productions/pale moon/xnxnxnxnxn.default/thumbnails/31805711e216f3e4e2da3790f3b5226e.png': Input/output error
    find: `/home/kozaki/.cache/moonchild productions/pale moon/xnxnxnxn.default/thumbnails/bbd425470538a44fbc0e6e85081c627f.png': Input/output error
    <SNIP>
    /home/kozaki/.local
    /home/kozaki/.local/share
    /home/kozaki/.local/share/gvfs-metadata
    /home/kozaki/.local/share/Trash
    /home/kozaki/.local/share/Trash/files
    /home/kozaki/.local/share/Trash/info
    /home/kozaki/.mozilla
    /home/kozaki/.mozilla/firefox
    /home/kozaki/.mozilla/firefox/xnxnxnxnxn.default
    /home/kozaki/.mozilla/firefox/xnxnxnxnxn.default/sessionstore-backups
    /home/kozaki/.mozilla/firefox/xnxnxnxnxn.default/gmp-gmpopenh264
    /home/kozaki/.mozilla/firefox/xnxnxnxnxn.default/weave
    /home/kozaki/.mozilla/firefox/xnxnxnxnxn.default/weave/logs
    /home/kozaki/.thumbnails
    /home/kozaki/.thumbnails/normal
    /home/kozaki/.thumbnails/large
    /home/kozaki/.macromedia
    /home/kozaki/.macromedia/Flash_Player
    /home/kozaki/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects
    /home/kozaki/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/Z2AZ4ZHZ
    find: `/home/kozaki/.moonchild productions/pale moon/xnxnxnxnxn.default/bookmarkbackups/bookmarks-2016-01-05.json': Input/output error
    find: `/home/kozaki/.moonchild productions/pale moon/xnxnxnxnxn.default/bookmarkbackups/bookmarks-2016-01-04.json': Input/output error
    <SNIP>

See that ?

Porteus also reverts to the 'en_US' keyboard layouts (in tty and X), whatever I do and the kmap cheatcode in porteus.cfg. E.g.:

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# find /home/kozaki -user root -exec chown kozaki:kozaki {} \;

3) As for the I/O errors on Palemoon/, I runned a fsck.vfat yesterday on another OS; second output was fine. Today that issue disapeared.

Have added 001.core.xzm /etc/{passwd,groups} back to their "cleaned" equivalent in /etc/ and will now reboot in Fresh mode.

Please what caused this? and do you know of a good way to recover this live?

[Bogomips]

Porteus is KISS, we know that.
Porteus also reverts to the 'en_US' keyboard layouts (in tty and X), whatever I do and the kmap cheatcode in porteus.cfg. E.g.:

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# find /home/kozaki -user root -exec chown kozaki:kozaki {} \;

Please what caused this? and do you know of a good way to recover this live?

Methinks you have come across the two user issue, AFAIK some routines are just hard coded for root and guest. So if kozaki is supposed to be a user then kozaki falls into an invalid category

The recovery i'd say, best knows brokenman.

[datruche]

So, as per Bogomips I've come upton the single single user UNIX?

[brokenman]

In the standard slackware porteus yes there are some scripts hard coded for user guest. In Nemesis this is not the case.

[aus9]

In Nemesis this is not the case.

I did not know that....but as per OP KISS why not hide that info so we have uniform approach?
that is....lets tell users safer to login as guest and not some other name?
----ignoring users who choose to login as root.

[Ed_P]

----ignoring users who choose to login as root.

Besides being rude to some of the admins and mods who do that that's just not the style of this forum. The senior forum/linus members always try to help everybody.. Even dummies like me.

[aus9]

Ed_P

I am not attempting to be rude to users who choose to login as root as I know there are a few of them.

If I have upset any admin I am sure they will let me know. Maybe you missed my point?

Which is users who login as guest from Porteus/Slackware know not to create another local user. As this point was not clear to you....I shall berate myself.

[brokenman]

I fail to see where offense could be taken. In any case, some distros don't even give the option for a root login. There is only a non-privileged user, that can elevate to root when necessary. IMHO this is how it should be.

[datruche]

Methinks you have come across the two user issue, AFAIK some routines are just hard coded for root and guest. So if kozaki is supposed to be a user then kozaki falls into an invalid category

The recovery i'd say, best knows brokenman.

So, as per Bogomips I've come upton the single single user UNIX?

In the standard slackware porteus yes there are some scripts hard coded for user guest. In Nemesis this is not the case.

this caused me to fall on the ground (ass first yeah, thanks)
I needed a live system for both demo newbie friendly amongst relatives or else people, and my own live OS. Without interfering one user with the other's need or tastes. Also was in for Slack.
I find it more than cool to have a 'test', 'secure remote backup' and 'guest' profiles on my system (yeah even on Windosz). Guess what? Went Nemesis.
With better efficiency in my own workflow I mean, really. And regrets for the user-friendly brain fu*k stable part of Porteus and my initial project with this surprising distro!