Thought that I would just do a full reinstall on the ThinkPad, using the Matrix ISO file, but still more is going crazy.

It has suddenly been decided that the USB devices to which I've written uneventfully for years suddenly belong to root and that there's nothing I can do about it. This includes SD cards that I use to move stuff from my cameras to my hard drive every day.

So while I was ultimately able to copy the .iso to a USB drive, the ThinkPad won't boot from it. It *will* boot from a pre-existing system rescue stick, so it's not the TPad.

How can I restore normal behavior to USB? Running current Debian and current TDE, both fully updated.

Very bad dream here this week.