[solved]Problem with normal users and X

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Issack
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[solved]Problem with normal users and X

Post#1 by Issack » 12 Jan 2011, 00:04

Hi,

I almost reported a problem earlier that I'm not sure is a cause or a symptom of the problem I'm having now

When using the changes files slaxsave.dat. I'm having the issue of having KDE4 crash when attempting to boot into X as a normal user of my creation. It seems to work just fine for root, I am able to enter KDE or LXDE and make changes at will. I'm reasonably sure I have the correct permission settings and groups for that user to use KDE4.

Strangely enough, said user can get into LXDE but wicd crashes. When trying to boot into KDE, wicd appears to just hang on every attempt on KDE (with the error message that I need to kill wicd.pid, even though a reboot should fix this, it just happens again on subsequent retries). When switching from root to said user in KDE, it appears to continuously crash and make another attempt to boot KDE over and over again until I stop it.

Slaxsave.dat is on an NTFS partition. I'm also noticing that some modules are simply not being added when trying to insert them on root after making changes to slaxsave.dat. I am not sure if the two problems are related.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Last edited by Issack on 15 Jan 2011, 01:04, edited 4 times in total.

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Re: Problem with normal users and X

Post#2 by Ahau » 12 Jan 2011, 01:42

I had similar issues (KDE hanging, wicd errors) when running 64 bit as well. I chalked it up to using an old, slow USB drive for a 64 bit system. I'm going to put 64 bit on a newer, faster drive, and will let you know if that does or doesn't work out.

How old is your drive, is it USB 1.1 or 2? What size is it, and what filesystem?
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Re: Problem with normal users and X

Post#3 by Issack » 12 Jan 2011, 01:56

USB: 2.0
Size: 8.0 GB
Partition: W95 FAT32
It's essentially this drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820220263

It worked just fine for every slax and slax remix version before this. However, before this I used primarily x86 versions.

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Re: Problem with normal users and X

Post#4 by fanthom » 12 Jan 2011, 07:42

1) to get wicd to work for normal user you need to add him to 'netdev' group (/etc/groups file) and then reboot Porteus as some services need to be restarted. Tested and works great.
2) KDE-4 crash on USB with slaxsave.dat - may be a slow device reason, but shouldn't.
Do a simple test for me - edit /etc/rc.d/rc.S and add 'mount tmpfs /var/tmp -t tmpfs' at the very beginning. It should look like here:

Code: Select all

# Mounting proc and sys
mount proc /proc -t proc
mount sysfs /sys -t sysfs
mount tmpfs /var/tmp -t tmpfs
save edited rc.S in /porteus/rootcopy and reboot to check if it's going to work now.
KDE-4 is saving a big files in /var/tmp dir so when tmpfs is there, they will be saved in the RAM and not inside slaxsave.dat.

Waiting on a report.
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Re: Problem with normal users and X

Post#5 by Ahau » 12 Jan 2011, 15:15

Issack,

It looks like my issue was something different--on re-reading your post, I see that you were able to get into KDE with your changes, as root, and that your changes are on a different partition. The symptoms were similar, but I don't think the problem was. This morning, I put 64-bit Porteus v09 on a 4GB USB 2.0 drive, and it ran with changes without a problem. The older drive (1GB, and I think USB 1.1) gave me all sorts of headaches in 64 bit, but has been demoted to running 32-bit, and seems to be handling that just fine.
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Re: Problem with normal users and X

Post#6 by Issack » 13 Jan 2011, 04:35

Sorry for taking so long to report back, I'm not quite in the same timezone.

I've made the recommended changes to rc.S. As well as to the user in question (added to group netdev). Unfortunately, wicd continues to hang and KDE continues to crash for the new user.

Nothing has changed since last report, KDE still crashing. Even with /var/tmp mounted as tmpfs.

If you want I can try reformatting the entire USB drive as another filesystem type and reinstalling porteus onto it.

One more thing, I'm noticing that KDE does not want to log out, instead, it appears to "Take control" (for lack of a better word) of the active screen, lock said screen, in which case it freezes/crashes instead of putting me back into TTY1.

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Re: Problem with normal users and X

Post#7 by fanthom » 13 Jan 2011, 11:23

@Issack

try reinstalling everything (fastest option) and create normal user account once again.
here is the full procedure after logging to the text mode:

xconf
cp -r /root /home/fanthom
useradd -G netdev -m fanthom
passwd fanthom
chown -R fanthom:users /home/fanthom
reboot


works for me :)
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Re: Problem with normal users and X

Post#8 by Issack » 14 Jan 2011, 20:18

Okay I've been doing some testing, and I seem to have found the problem.

First off, fanthom was correct. The way of adding users by copying over the root directory to the user's new home directory seems to be the only way to add a user.

Before (as in slax-remix) I would use the adduser command and follow the prompt to create a user. This is no longer working for some reason.

Also, frequent KDE crashing occurs if I copy over the skeleton directory as opposed to the root directory while using the traditional useradd command (perhaps changes are needed to the default skeleton directory?). Following fanthom's instructions everything seems to work just fine.

I'm not sure if this is a potential bug or not. But I will add [SOLVED] to the title anyway.

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Re: [Solved]Problem with normal users and X

Post#9 by fanthom » 14 Jan 2011, 20:20

This is the secret of KDE-4 settings :wink:
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Re: Problem with normal users and X

Post#10 by Issack » 15 Jan 2011, 00:47

One more possible problem to report (though unrelated). Adding modules no longer seems to move the module to the modules folder (as in it is forgotten and not loaded at startup). Is anyone else getting this problem or is it just me?

Posted after 4 hours 24 minutes 33 seconds:
Re: Problem with normal users and X
I just had wicd lock up again for seemingly no reason. System can no longer boot into runlevel 4.

I'm removing [solved] from the topic title until I can find a workaround.

This time it appears to have happened due to me changing the root password from the default 'toor'. I seem to be able to replicate this. root can still enter KDE, normal users cannot(EDIT: I've just found that normal users can indeed get into KDE, but only through runlevel 3).

Crash occurred at the exact moment that I tried to convert a package I built with slackbuild. I had completed this operation successfully before, the second time I tried it, it crashed.


EDIT #2: I've done some experimentation and got it to work again. All I did was put it in runlevel 3, log in as the normal user, and then killed the wicd process, and then rebooted.

I'm not entirely sure what is happening or why it continues to do this. To prevent further confusion, I'm adding [solved] back to the topic title.

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Re: Problem with normal users and X

Post#11 by fanthom » 15 Jan 2011, 07:11

Issack wrote:One more possible problem to report (though unrelated). Adding modules no longer seems to move the module to the modules folder (as in it is forgotten and not loaded at startup). Is anyone else getting this problem or is it just me?
Modules are moved to modules folder only when activated inside aufs (virtual root filesystem). If your module is stored on physical device - for example hd partition - then it wont be moved anywhere.
I presume that Tomas M designed this system catch up all newly downloaded/converted modules and put them is the right place. Although - he predicted that users can have large external module repos stored on HD from which LZM's are activated occasionally and moving them to /slax (porteus)/modules makes no sense.

BTW - no exception for this:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=44
10. One thread - one topic. In case of having few issues with Porteus or modules, please start a new thread for each.
Please add [Solved] to your thread title if the solution was found.

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