liltux

while(Alive){Code();}

How-to fix errors with the .dmrc file

with 16 comments

After using Ubuntu over the last 30 days without any errors or problems I encountered an error “User’s $HOME/.dmrc” file is being ignored. This prevents the default session and language from being saved. File should be owned by user and have 644 permission. User $HOME directory must be owned by user and not writable by other users” after logging in today.

I tried googling for a fix, most sites asked me to change the file permissions to 644 as stated in the error message. I tried this fix and it did not work. After some more searching I came across this French site which had the solution.

To fix this error try the following

1. open a console window and at the prompt type the following to change the file permissions and hit enter

chmod 644 ~/.dmrc

2. type the following command to change the ownership of the file and hit enter

sudo chown your_login_name /home/your_login_name/.dmrc

3. The final step is to assign permissions on the home directory such that it is accessible only to you ( this step is very important)

sudo chmod 700 /home/your_login_name

This should fix the problem and you should never see the error message again.

Written by suresh_ning

June 4, 2007 at 8:42 am

Posted in Linux, ubuntu

16 Responses

Subscribe to comments with RSS.

  1. What’s the difference between step 2 and step 3?
    the two commands are exactly the same. Is it a typo?
    shouldn’t step 3 be a chmod 644 or a chown on the user home directory rather than on the .dmrc file

    Rami

    June 6, 2007 at 6:35 pm

  2. thank you!!!

    btw, for the other guy:

    step 2 changes ownership of the .dmrc file to you.

    step 3 changes accessibility to only the owner of that home directory. if you didn’t perform step 2 before performing step 3, you might have limited accessibility to the /home/whatever directory to root.

    dave

    June 22, 2007 at 12:31 pm

  3. Am glad this helped someone.

    cipher27

    June 22, 2007 at 1:25 pm

  4. I’ve tried to do this two times and got Permission denied and then got Operation not permitted.
    Your instructions are very clear and simple. What am I missing?
    Thanks

    Richard

    July 1, 2007 at 9:19 am

  5. Hi Richard,

    Are you using sudo before the commands?

    Harish

    cipher27

    July 2, 2007 at 10:23 pm

  6. WOW. Thanks SO much. I was looking for this for a while. :D

    Joe Smith

    July 23, 2007 at 5:32 pm

  7. Glad to be of help Joe :)

    cipher27

    July 23, 2007 at 5:48 pm

  8. Thank you, cipher27! I was a Mandriva user absolutely desesperate due to this problem, but your solution works fine! (Sorry for my English, I’m an spañish speaker)

    Silvia

    September 15, 2007 at 10:33 am

  9. Terima kasih atas petunjuknya.sungguh sangat membantu!

    totok

    September 15, 2007 at 10:50 pm

  10. Thank-you very much. I don’t know what a .dmrc is, but it’s been bugging me for weeks!

    jonpon

    November 15, 2007 at 3:25 pm

  11. Thank you! I got everything working now.
    The .dmrc errors started to appear just after I bluntly chowned and chmoded my whole home folder.

    kadakas

    November 25, 2007 at 3:34 pm

  12. Whaa it did not work for me after step2 it says:
    chown: cannot access `/home/kxesporlas/.dmrc’: No such file or directory

    Err.. a newb here… any help? >__<

    kxesporlas

    January 30, 2008 at 9:38 am

  13. Thanks a lot. Could not find a workable solution at the Ubuntu forums. I had to create a new .dmrc file though.

    Rayaz

    May 23, 2008 at 3:17 pm

  14. When i type step 1: chmod 644 ~/.dmrc it says no such file or directory

    Xaviar

    June 9, 2008 at 2:14 am

  15. Excellent! Thanks for posting!

    JGrace

    October 20, 2008 at 10:10 pm

  16. [...] Begitulah masalah terselesaikan. Namun karena penasaran, setelah balik lagi ke data center langsung saya tanya si mbah dan hasilnya masalah ini pernah dilaporkan juga sebagai kutu di launchpad. Bisa dilihat di sini dan sana. Dan jika langkah di atas tidak juga membuat .dmrc berhenti menyueki anda coba solusi yang ini. [...]


Leave a Reply