On Sep 16,  5:43pm, Paul Whiting wrote:
> Subject: Struggling with RiscBSD: It's a miracle!
> Outstanding problems so far:
>
> Read only FS:
> Sorry, I misread the output of 'mount'. The 'a' and 'e' look quite similar
> to me in the small BSD font. The correct output has /usr on wd0e.
> Furthermore, I was able to write a file using 'root' and 'who > test'! If I
> try to do this with another user, then I get a 'Permission Denied' error.
> This doesn't surprise me as I don't know how to set up a user properly (the
> manual helpfully tells me to set up a user, but not how to do it). In
> addition, cat /etc/fstab produces similar information to what I now believe
> that it should.

Right, this may be because the ownership of the directory is wrong. It sounds
as if you have the passwd entry sorted out because otherwise you wouldn't be
able to log in. When you log in as a non-root user (I will use 'user1' as my
example) do a 'pwd'. This will tell you the directory you logged in in. This
needs to be owned by 'user1'. To check the ownership do a 'ls -al'. The output
should contain a line similar to the following:


drwxr-xr-x   90 user1  group1    1024 Sep 12 17:04 .

The filename of '.' is the current directory. It is likely that what you will
see will look something like:

drwxr-xr-x   90 root   sys       1024 Sep 12 17:04 .


To fix this note down the output of 'pwd' (eg /usr/users/user1). Log in as root
and 'cd' to the directory previously output by 'pwd'. Next execute:

chown user1 .
chgrp group1 .

Then when you log in as user1 and do an 'ls -al' the ownership of the directory
should have changed:

drwxr-xr-x   90 user1  group1    1024 Sep 12 17:04 .

(note these ls -al outputs are from IRIX because thats what I have in front of
me but it shouldn't make much difference).

If I remember correctly the 'rcm' tool can set up users for you. This is a
non-standard tool specific to RiscBSD.

> X:
> I followed your instructions carefully, and then typed 'xdm'. The machine
> told me that only root wanted to do this. I then tried 'startx', whereupon I
> was given an error about my display. Logging on as root, I actually managed
> to start X using 'xdm'!

Yup, xdm needs to be run as root. There is some fiddling with permissions which
needs to be done to use startx (something else the non-standard 'rcm' can do).

> New Problems encountered:
> As above, I don't think I set up a user correctly. To which group should
> they belong? I currently have two users as 'nobody' and 'no group'
> respectively.

I typically create one called 'users' by adding another entry to the group file
(/etc/group). Note that anyone who wants to sysadmin stuff should be in group 0
(wheel) in addition to any other group. This allows you to change userid with
the su command ('man su' for further details).

> In X, every now and then the window becomes filled with esoteric messages
> along the lines of 'keybd repeat 6 times recieved'. Is this normal? Do I
> need to increase the maximum number of processes or some such thing?

This is normal :-( It is a bug in the keyboard driver. I will get around to
fixing it within the next month or so I hope (the whole driver is being
overhauled). Fortunately the main effect seems to be that the Caps-Lock led
doesn't behave itself.

Best of Luck with learning to use RiscBSD and don't hesitate to ask if you have
any problems.

Cheers

Rob