FreeBSD 6.2 ... a few questions – 2097 days old

[longgone]

I have just recently installed FreeBSD6.2 ..... and have a few questions ...

1. After I have logged in as user and want to do "SU" in a consol I can't do it .. it tells me "sorry" and goes back to the user prompt .. what do I need to do to correct this ... along this line if I try to use the "super user" consol from the menu .. all I get is a quick flash on the monitor and that is the end of it ... once again .. how do I correct that ....

2. Currently using KDM as the window mngr from a root login ... my question is this ... I also have Gnome and XFce pkgs d/l'd too and I would like them to appear in the menu ... if I add them into ".xinitrc" am I going to create conflicts within the OS ....

3. Last (for the moment) what is the difference between FreeBSD 5.5 and 6.2 .. I have them both and am curious what any differences are ...

TIA ....

[catcorpse]

ok your login will needed to be added to wheel in order to SU. Log in as root and just add yourself to /etc/group under wheel and you will be able to log in.

as far as .xinitrc no just add exec startgnome and when you do startx, that will run. They won't conflict with one another.

[longgone]

Okay .... got that so far ... at the moment I log in as / and then enter KDM and it goes to my GUI .... now when I add gnome and xfce to .xinitrc ... I am guessing that at the login I can enter GDM for Gnome and XFce to enter XFce and it should take me to the respective window manager .... one last item .... if I also change "/etc/ttys" to use KDM is there going to a problem if I want to use a window manager other than KDM .. ?????

also thanks for the help .....

[Grogan]

KDM is a session manager and graphical login manager and you should be able to start any desktop environment or window manager through it. (you can start gnome through KDM too). KDM should already have the necessary configuration to start a whole bunch of window managers, including ones you don't have. They should show up in the drop list.

I would not do that though... I would just log onto the console and startx manually so that it's easy to fall back to console. Or start your KDM session manager manually like you've been doing. In my opinion it just makes the system more fragile if you're relying on that crud. If you're ever in a situation where X won't fully start and it's leaving you with an unusable display, you'd have to log in single user mode and change your ttys file again.

[longgone]

Still no luck on the SU login ... added myself to the "wheel" line as you said now it has "root and myself" on that line but I still get "sorry" when I try to go to the consol using "SU" ..... another item I just found out is when I boot up to the login and login as "user" and try to start kdm it tells me only root can start "kdm-bin" ... is this also something that is in the /etc/group area .....

and both gnome and XFce are added into the .xinitrc file but gnome is the only I can get to start ... mainly because I have no idea what to enter to get XFce to start ....

other than these items ... I have not yet started to really explore it ... I do get an error about the audio when I start kdm .. but have not looked into it yet ..

[Grogan]

No, the session manager (e.g. kdm) is a system wide thing and it needs to launch as root.

Only one can be added to .xinitrc. If using that method you'll have to edit it to change to another window manager (that's what I do). You don't actually need to for xfce4, you can just run startxfce4 (as a normal user) instead of startx and it will start the X server if it's not already running. This is how I start XFCE4

In /etc/group, did you separate root and your username with a comma? No space, just a comma.

e.g.

wheel:*:0:root,yourusername

(note that's a made up example only to illustrate :root,yourusername

P.S. For your audio, there will be no driver loaded by default. You'll have to kldload it, or edit your /boot/loader.conf file.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...und-setup.html

[catcorpse]

ok in the .x file add startxfce4 in order to start up xfce. Depend on the version but that should fire it up .

*edit* grogan's much faster and it's better written

[longgone]

Ahhh .... I see ,,, made change ... dropped space .. added comma .. in /etc/group .... good to go ... SU works now ... also I can now boot into all three KDM, GDM, and XFce ... mainly using KDM for the time being ... and setting up "SeaMonkey" as the browser ... only drawback there is I can't get the "SeaMonkey" icon to the task bar ... I have an idea how it is done but just don't remember the steps to do it .....

and ... in theory .. I would like to play with some other BSD distros ... how is 5.5 different that 6.2 ... I have also been told that only a few BSD distros can be installed on extended partions .. most have to be on a primary partition .... how do i find out which is which ??????

[Grogan]

As far as I know, BSD needs to create a slice, which is a primary partition, not a logical drive (It's kind of like an extended partition itself which is a type of primary partition used as a container for logical drives... Disklabel partitions in BSD terms)

If you want to put an icon on your KDE panel, one easy way to do it is to just create a desktop icon and then drag it to the panel. Otherwise explore the right click options... Add new non kde application or some such.

[longgone]

A few more questions ...... one is the power off .. how/what/where do I make the necessary entries so that when I click on "shutdown" it will pwr off instead of just going to the "press any button to reboot" prompt ...

next question ... I have tried to get the latest versions of both Firefox and Sea Monkey through pkg_add but am not having much luck the response I am getting is that I have the lastest version ... would I have a better chance if I used ports ... ??

[longgone]

I forgot to mention in my last post that the shutdown item is when I am using KDM .. it works fine in GDM ....

[Grogan]

Probably GDM uses the proper shutdown command for FreeBSD. To power off a FreeBSD system use "shutdown -p now" instead of -h. You can probably edit the shutdown command in your KDM config. $PREFIX/share/config/kdm/kdmrc

[Shutdown]
# The command (subject to word splitting) to run to halt the system.
# Default is "/sbin/halt"
HaltCmd="shutdown -p now"

Try that anyway

I would try building those browsers through ports. They will be patched to compile correctly for your system and will build dependencies

[longgone]

I am obviously (my view) not doing something right here ..... I tried as root to enter this info ...

ee /etc/KDM.config and then inserted the info you gave me .... and nothing changed .. that is what brings me to the conclusion I am doing it wrong ..

along the same lines but not related ... I notice that every time (using ee) that I make an entry that the particular area that I am making the changes to is always empty .... is this normal ????

[Grogan]

First of all I don't think (but I don't know) if your file would be /etc/KDM.config. I don't actually use KDM, I was just looking at my kdmrc file on a Linux system.

You have to find the section in the file and uncomment it, and maybe try it with or without the quotes around it. Some of those strings need quotes and others don't. Also, you may have to give the path to your shutdown binary. I'm not even sure if that'll work in KDM on FreeBSD to use the shutdown binary.

You could always drop back to console and type shutdown -p now when you want to shut down if you can't figure out the KDM thing.

[longgone]

I see ...... well in that case I shall just keep plugging away at it but for now as you said -p works very well .... tks

[Grogan]

Heheh... I finally managed to mount my freebsd 7 filesystem in Linux. I thought it wasn't working (I just assumed it was because the filesystem was different), but it was because I made a typo in the command. That's all I can think of, because it just worked this time.

Anyhow, I scoured the drive and I don't even have a kdmrc file, (and I don't think there exists a KDM.config file... perhaps you're thinking of /etc/GDM.config). I've never started kdm though, so maybe one was never generated. The traditional place for the kdmrc file is $PREFIX/share/config/kdm. That means if kde is installed to /usr/local (as it would be if it came from ports), that's /usr/local/share/config/kdm/kdmrc. If it's installed to /usr, that's /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc and so on.

You can use the find utility to try to locate your kdmrc file

su to root, so you don't get a lot of permission denied messages.

find / -name kdmrc

I did some googling, and it's a known issue with kdmrc... it defaults to the halt command instead of shutdown -p. So it looks like we're on the right track.

http://monkey.org/freebsd/archive/fr.../msg00822.html

So find your kdmrc file, find the [Shutdown] section, uncommend the HaltCmd= line and change it to "shutdown -p now". It says subject to word splitting, so that means it needs the quotes because the command contains spaces

[Shutdown]
# The command (subject to word splitting) to run to halt the system.
# Default is "/sbin/halt"
HaltCmd="shutdown -p now"

[longgone]

AAhhh HHaaaa...... just installed FreeBSD 7.0 Beta3 ...from disk ... some errors having to do with Xorg ... but ... after all was done ... went to do pkg_add for the xorg to see if it would pick up what seemed to not be there .... the response was that my xorg was up to date ... installed gnome, kde, and xfce ... this was an upgrade from the 7.0 Beta1.5 ... in the 1.5 version I noticed that in KDE .. using the KDM ... the shutdown worked just as if it was a Linux ... click on start ,, click on shutdown and it powered the computer off, have not yet tried this yet in Beta3 .. but one problem I have run across in both 1.5 and 3 is for some reason it will not allow me to "su" .. I found this problem while trying to set up my printer ... otherwise so far so good ...

[Grogan]

Did you remember to put yourself in the wheel group correctly? That's all that's needed to use the su binary. That's because of the permissions on the binary. I don't know of any other reason why you wouldn't be able to su.

[longgone]

Umm...... well now that you reminded me of that item .... it is done and now it works .... I must make notes ofr these things .....

thank you ...