On 2020-09-03 15:20 +0100, anthony gennard wrote: > Greg Wooledge on 1st September very kindly gave me a detailed reply to my > cry for help. > > I tried to follow his reply but I have lost all my memory following a > stroke. > So it took me some time to do so as I had to relearn the basic file > commands. I got as far as the following:- > > " - bash: home/john: Is a directory > john@john-PC:/$ ls -ld home/john /home/john/.ICEauthority > dr-xr-xr-x 26 john john 4096 Aug 31 11:46 home/john > -rw------- 1 john john 9016 Aug 31 11:21 home/john/.ICEauthority " > > This takes me no further forward. > > What puzzles me is that the login worked at least 30 times without the > error message and I cannot understand why it stopped.
Your home directory is not writable by you, so no new files can be created there. Run "chmod 755 /home/john" to fix that. Cheers, Sven