Please advise on 2.2 -> 2.4 upgrade issues

[lite098765]

Sorry to be a PITA, but the upgrade process clearly doesn't work for me, and I don't see how it even could. Here's a bit from lite-upgrade-series2. Note that it is executed without sudo. The first call it makes is MKDIRBUPS, again without gksudo. It tries to create a backup directory under /etc/skel, which is owned by root and is not publicly writable: drwxr-xr-x 21 1000 root  4.0K Dec  1 01:57 skel. So, it is either my permissions are off or the upgrade script is broken. I have everything updated and upgraded. What should I do?

Code:

# Set functions for non-root execution
# The ones that need root go to the other file: lite-upgrade-system-series2
MKDIRBUPS() {
    echo "#Creating back up directories..."
    sleep 2
        mkdir -p /home/$USER/.llupgradebackup/2.4
            if [ "${PIPESTATUS[0]}" -ne "0" ]; then
                        echo "#Error"
                    sleep 2
                                        zenity --error \
                                        --title="Error" --text="There was an error while\nCreating back up directories!\nUpgrade canceled."
                    exit 1
                        fi
     mkdir -p /etc/skel/.llupgradebackup/2.4
            if [ "${PIPESTATUS[0]}" -ne "0" ]; then
                        echo "#Error"
                    sleep 2
                                        zenity --error \
                                        --title="Error" --text="There was an error while\nCreating back up directories!\nUpgrade canceled."
                    exit 1
                        fi
}