cannot read old table for '<user>': Permission denied

[MaxBenn]

Hi.
I've used incron to backup my databases. I use multiple Servers and Clients with a bunch of users who are using my Severs for their DB's as well.
After some time I was annoyed by the fact, that I had the uid and gid e.g. 1002 on one system and 1000 on the other one... so when I sshfs into one server from a client it was showing me a different username than mine, since the uid on both machines was the same but not the username.
So I took some time to give everybody their unique uid and gid.
Now when I am trying to access my 'incrontable -e' it is telling me that: cannot read old table for '': Permission denied.
Is there any way to get is back?
removing incron from my system and incl autoclean and autoremove doesn't work.

Thanks & Cheers,
MaxBenn

[MaxBenn]

I've tried purging incron... it removed incron.allow as well as all other files for that program such as the systemd symlink etc...
So I had to make a new incron.allow list.
I'm getting still the same error message... :(

Thanks & Cheers,
MaxBenn

[MaxBenn]

OK.... After digging for the Issue for more than an hour I decided to ask you guys on gitub.... Now that I've posted my question here I found the solution.

The tables are stored in the folder /etc/spool/incron/
so I had to chown the files to the user and everything is working again...
Still curious why apt-get purge didn't delete those files.

Cheers,
MaxBenn

[wiktor2200]

apt-get purge command removes only config files which are defined as config file in dpkg metadata. For example: when you are uninstalling mysql, you have to remove /var/lib/mysql manually and it won't be removed by purge command. That's the same case.

To avoid future problems there should be some FAQ section in README or uninstallation guide or something like that. What do you think @danfruehauf? I can write some examples and more documentation of usage in the close future and create pull request if you don't mind :)

[MaxBenn]

@wiktor2200
Thanks for oyur reply. I thought purge will do it. Anyway... I found another annoying bug. But for that I will open a new thread.
Have a good one! :D

Thanks & Cheers,
MaxBenn

[danfruehauf]

To avoid future problems there should be some FAQ section in README or uninstallation guide or something like that. What do you think @danfruehauf? I can write some examples and more documentation of usage in the close future and create pull request if you don't mind :)

I'd always welcome more documentation. Did anyone ever say no to documentation? 😄

[ringobowie]

Just had a similar issue (cannot read old table for 'userxyz': Permission denied) running incron on ubuntu 20.04.
Solution was to repair owner::group rights on the user table file in /var/spool/incron/ - the file was owned by 'root', group 'incron' instead of 'userxyz', group 'incron'.
Running a similar setup on a second ubuntu 20.04 box without the described behavior.