I am running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I only have the one user which I created when I installed Ubuntu. Everything has been fine - love it - until I updated a software package recently from the command line using sudo (not gksudo). I was having a little bother which did not make sense to me and in a fluff changed my user read/write privileges through the GUI (not even clear how I got there!). After restart I was stuck in a login loop - using the right login password but kept getting looped back to the login and could only login as Guest. I could still login with my user/password via ctrl + alt + f1 Eventually I was able to login again at start up. Not sure exactly what it was I changed that worked but it was one of/or a combination of installing latest security updates, changing login manager from LightDM to DGM and back again, removing the ICE/Xauthority and chown user.

Current dilemma is my primary admin user privileges were read only. In the command line ls -ls /home/user returned this value:

drwx------ 48 username username 20480

I have since changed this using sudo chmod 0755 /home/username (from my limited understanding 755 should return my user privileges to their original read/write glory). ls -ld /home/user currently shows my user privileges as:

drwxr-xr-x 48 username username 20480

I still seem to have only read access permissions. I've been through lots of threads (and the help file) that talk about creating new users/groups permissions etc. but specific info on returning my existing global/admin/primary users privileges to what they were when I first created that user - baffling me. I feel this is something really simple I'm just not getting it. Please help!

sudo mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /proc type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusect1 (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=07pe tmpfs55)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw, ,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/meng/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=meng)
none on /tmp/guest-1R2Fi5 type tmpsf (rw,mode=700)