[Discuss] Linux Mint Cinnamon Home Permissions

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Will Rico <willrico at gmail.com> wrote:

> So my question is...How can updating a graphics driver change someone's home
> directory permissions?

The .deb file format allows for both pre & post install scripts
(programs) to be run.   For what is probably some truly stupid reason,
it is likely that something in one of those scripts changed the
permissions on your home directory.   Any time you install a new
package, you are running those scripts as root.   This is why using
PPA's as sources for packages or even worse random web sites should be
approached with some caution.

As for your particular circumstance, I can only suggest you try to
take apart the .deb file that you just installed to figure out exactly
what happened.   A copy should still be in the /var/cache/apt/archives
directory.   You will probably have to use the ar, tar, and gunzip
commands in various orders to do so and through the resulting files to
figure out what happened.   You will have to debug the program
(script) to figure out what happened.

Good Luck,
Bill Bogstad