no volume icon after creating new user acct

[rek769]

Greetings all,
Using XFCE build, copy2ram, no save file, and no cheat codes

Following this process:
- system logs in a guest
- logout
- login as root
- create new user (xyz) in terminal
- copy all files from /home/guest to /home/xyz (including hidden files)
- chown -R xyz /home/xyz
- logout
- login as xyz

Now there is no volumeicon in the system notification area. Volumeicon is not shown in task manager.

Attempting to execute from terminal results in this error message:

volumeicon: alsa_backend.c:86: asound_get_volume: Assertion 'm_elem !=((void *)0)' failed.
Aborted

Login out and back in as either root or guest and the volumeicon is running normally...

Any ideas on how to get the volumeicon back under user xyz??

[Seva]

there are guest user and root user, i dont need to create any specific users to use this good OS, i just log into guest user or sometimes into root user

[brokenman]

Furthermore, some scripts are hard coded to look for only these two users.

[rek769]

So does that mean that there is no solution to this problem?

[libernux]

Did you try to reboot instead of logout/login?
Just ignore this. I noticed that you always run fresh.
Sorry.

[rek769]

I would like to have more than one user account so that each person using the machine can have their own individual setup. This is a no-brainer with most Linux distros and even window$. Don't think it should be that big of a deal. I love Porteus so far especially being able to run entirely in RAM. However, I would like other users to have sound...
If anyone can point me to the scripts that need to be executed I could probably run them manually at startup for each new user but I am not even sure that is the issue...hence my initial post...

[Seva]

maybe different DE doesnt have this problem

[rek769]

Same problem and error message present in KDE, XFCE, LXQT, and even a Fluxbox module that was posted here in the forum.

Appears that this may have something to do with pulseaudio as Skype has no sound unless ran from root or guest accounts...

[rek769]

After searching around this forum and finding lots of volume and skype issues it seems that perhaps there is no answer for this problem. However, quite by accident I realized that after several months of having Pulse Audio problems Puppy Linux (Tahr 6.02) is now finally able to run skype again. The lack of that capability was my impetus for searching for another portable linux. So given the problems I have with creating new user accounts in Porteus and given that my original problem is no longer a problem I'm going to stick with the Pup for now. I will be watching to see how Porteus evolves in hopes that it becomes a viable solution for me in the future as I really love the 64 bit architecture (which Tahr Puppy lacks), being able to change DE modules easily, and the ability to always run in RAM which is wonderful. Best of luck to Porteus as you move forward.

[Seva]

i share this pc with porteus with another man, and we both use guest account, except he uses persistent mode and i use copy to ram cos i like speed

[brokenman]

The problem here was not creating a new user account. You did this successfully. The problem was with the sound. When you boot, and no sound is successfully detected the icon doesn't appear in the panel. You need to fix the sound card issue and then rebooting should reproduce the desired result. It is no doubt a simple asound.conf configuration problem. My own system boots without a sound icon until I put the following in asound.conf:

defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.ctl.card 1

After this you need to go into skype and match the settings that the system has.

[port]

Furthermore, some scripts are hard coded to look for only these two users.

what do you mean with some scripts are hard coded to look for only these two users? I suppose all scripts and binaries use uid to deal with users so user names are ignored, I also suppose all scripts assume current user or check for all users defined so I cannot imagine what do you mena with hard coded, may you explain deeper please?

In fact I assume if I create a new user test with same uid as guest, both will be indistinguishable and thus you can log in either as guest or test with same effect:

Code: Select all

# grep guest /etc/passwd | sed 's/guest/test/g' >> /etc/passwd
# mkdir /home/test && cp -a /home/guest/{*,.??*} /home/test
# su - test
guest@porteus:~$ whoami
guest

As you can see you can log in as user test and use that user for every task being indistinguishable from user guest, system always resolve uid to user guest, this is because of having same uid it is assigned to first user found in passwd file, if you edit /etc/passwd file moving test user line before guest user line you will find both users guest and test now resolve to test and thus you will find all files owned by user guest now magically become owned by user test

Code: Select all

# vi /etc/passwd
# su - test
test@porteus:~$ pwd
/home/test
test@porteus:~$ ls -l
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 test guest 4096 Feb 16 19:43 Desktop/
drwxr-xr-x 2 test guest 4096 Feb 19 15:11 Downloads/
drwxr-xr-x 3 test guest 4096 Feb 16 21:02 my-documents/
drwxr-xr-x 3 test guest 4096 Feb 19 10:08 tmp/
test@porteus:~$ ls -l /home/guest
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 test guest 4096 Feb 16 19:43 Desktop/
drwxr-xr-x 2 test guest 4096 Feb 19 15:11 Downloads/
drwxr-xr-x 3 test guest 4096 Feb 16 21:02 my-documents/
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root  4096 Feb 19 10:08 tmp/

This makes very easy to implement user alias

For the same reason also I don't understand the fanthom quotation:

... although guest and root are hardcoded in porteus settings so i would recommend to stick to one of them.

I would really appreciate further explanations

[Bogomips]

Welcome to Porteus! It would be helpful if you could provide some idea of what you wish to do, so that a reasonably precise explanation could be provided.

[port]

Thak you for the welcome Bogomips! It's nice to be here I think porteus is a great distro

What I wish asking for further explanations is simply knows better and deeper the porteus system, in order to hack it and also help others.

I'm only a few days with porteus and I feel happy with it, no need another user account (only replied to this post because I don't understand why is so hard to create another user and why is it hardcoded in system roots)

But I think creating new account will be need when you move to business use, for example when you need a corporate account, authenticating to LDAP...

My plan when arriving to that situation is creating account aliases, for example, let's say my corporate account must follow company policy and so it must be e260it and must authenticate to corporate LDAP and use services in corporate LAN with that user, then my plan is create an alias e260it to my local user guest like that:

Code: Select all

root@porteus:~# awk -F: 'BEGIN {OFS=":"} /^guest/ {$1="e260it"; $3=$3+1; print $0;}' /etc/passwd >> /etc/passwd

This way I have a corporate e260it account which shares home dir and group with guest and thus I can log in either as guest or corporate user having direct access to all my data.

If you say guest user name and id are hardcoded in system then I would create user e260it having same uid, same gid and same home dir as user guest and force system resolve to user e260it as explained in previous message (or to resolve to user guest attending to some criteria, for example the network address being connected to)

It's just an idea, a bit of sane playing just for fun

I really like porteus and want to play with it and hack it but for hacking I need better understanding of its roots.

One idea is to encourage users to share its own modules with the community, I saw there's a section in the forum to share modules but I think it would be better if every users who wants to share will have a personal website sharing modules with a defined structure (aka a user repository) and make some scripts to search user repositories at your will, in a similar way as Crux does, allowing user repositories and allowing users to activate how many user repositories they will

[Bogomips]

Thanks for the interesting things you have had to say. The problem is that there is a time shortage for people to provide explanations. Look in our Tutorials section for more information. Use search otherwise, but be warned, there is a lot of outdated information floating around. Also look at the current discussion in Development section as to how Porteus can be made better, and from what you have said, maybe you can add your two cents regarding multiple user.