Debian :: How To Create User Hidden Files

I have lately been converting all my Ubuntu installs to Debian. Kind of like a revival meeting. Basically I am wiping the ~/.whatever files from the /home partition and saving any that might be handy later. Save any files from the / partition that I might want something from (/var/cache/apt/archives for packages installed, /usr/share/backgrounds and so forth). The last one I am working on is a little different. It is the first install (successful) install I ever did, Ubuntu 8.04, and it is ext3 on one partition. I did the above things as on the others but it was all on one partition. Fired up my netinstall disk for squeeze and installed on 2 partitions. One new one for / ext4 and the old partition not formatted, mounted as /home on ext3.

Did a base install with only the system utilities added by the taskel business at the end of install (like always). Rebooted to that install. Every thing seems to work at the basic level. My passwords worked, both for the text user login and then the root password when I ran su so that I could purge nfs-common (it has given me problems on every install for some reason). Came back here to my usual Debian testing install, fired up boinc and then the chroot environment for the new convert. Installed gnome-desktop-environment and some other things, all from a list that I have used before in just this manner.

Go back to boot to the new one, every thing rolls fine, get the GDM3 login, enter password. "Can't access ICEauthorization". Have to Ctrl+Alt+b out. Back here I check the /home/tom directory for that install and hit Ctrl+H and there are no hidden files. Run "dpkg-reconfigure -a" to no effect. Try adding my user again and that, of coarse dose not work because the user already exists. One other thing is that if I boot to recovery it does show the message to login or hit Ctrl+D but does not stop with a prompt. Shows a couple other things and stops. Ctrl+Alt+B to get out once and had to unplug once.