[ale] Losing Ubuntu
Joshua
jrtroberts at gmail.com
Mon Aug 16 01:29:22 EDT 2010
Thanks for the pointers. I will probably stick with Debian Lenny
(stable) for now. I need this machine for college courses and I don't
want to have to spend precious study time fixing things that break or
stop working with Debian Sid.
I might eventually experiment with sid once I get another computer and
more experience with linux. I am not currently prepared to deal with
whatever fallout comes along from using Debian unstable.
I do really like Debian with LXDE. My system actually functions at a
speed I can tolerate. I would like to know what the display (monitor)
manager is with KDE though. Reason being that when I am running KDE I
can get my LVDS and VGA0 to work as a twin view desktop and not just clone.
Gnome is unable to let me do that with out fussing over xorg.conf or
Xrandr, which I don't want to deal with. With KDE it just works on the
fly. Someone suggested that KDE might edit xorg.conf or something like
that, but I have not seen it be permanent.
Anyway, for whatever reason, LXDE uses Gnome behind Openbox it seems.
This leaves me wondering how I can get the KDE display functionality, at
least long enough to setup xorg.conf or Xrandr.
Does that make sense? I may have to learn how to add KDE, remove Gnome,
rework openbox to point to KDE for its settings and move on from there.
Not sure if that is what I want to do though.
Any thoughts?
Damon L. Chesser wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-08-16 at 00:23 -0400, Joshua wrote:
>
>> I am now a sudoer. It was really not hard at all.
>>
>> using su root I successfully edited visudo and now I am good to go.
>>
>> I also successfully learned how to move my /home from the 10GB root
>> partition I to the old 45GB /home partition I used with Ubuntu. For
>> some reason during the install and while running debian I could not use
>> the partition. The installer would not let me use it without formatting
>> and debian would not mount it, said directory did not exist. I probably
>> just need to mount it manually or something, but I wanted to clean out
>> all the old crap anyway so I just loaded a live CD, copied the stuff I
>> wanted to a flash drive. Then I rebooted into debian, used my new sudo
>> powers to run gparted -- formated the partition to ext3.
>>
>> Then I logged out, tried to use Alt+F1 to get a terminal but no luck, so
>> I changed sessions to a failsafe terminal. Using su root I used
>>
>> mv /home /home.bak
>> mkdir /home
>> mount -t ext3 /dev/hda8 /home
>> cp -a /home.bak/* /home
>>
>> edited the fstab with a /dev/hda8 /home ext3
>> defaults 0 0
>>
>> rebooted and yeah I have a 45GB /home... cheers.
>>
>> Next I had to do some more work by installing fuse-utils and ntfs-3g and
>> using fstab again to auto mount my old windows partition.
>>
>> I do believe that I am coming along.
>>
>> I like the response time and stability of debian more than ubuntu, but I
>> do miss having all the apps and repos that ubuntu has. Like the
>> chromium-browser is only in sid.
>>
>
> aahh-hemmm: Debian has MORE repos and apps then Ubuntu, by thousands.
> Check out Debian Mulitmedia http://debian-multimedia.org keep up to
> date with things at Debian Planet: http://planet.debian.org
>
> Go here for Chromium: http://www.google.com/chrome don't know if it
> will install in Stable or not, but perhaps Debian multimedia has it?
>
> Current Debian stable is about three years old (again, IIRC) so it is a
> bit stable for a desktop, but it is also fully functional. For Ubuntu
> flavor, you need Sid, but if it breaks, you get to keep all the pieces.
>
>
>> I made the mistake of adding sid to my /etc/apt/sources.list running a
>> apt-get update upgrade and broke my system.
>>
>
> Broke is a bit vague. aptitude full-upgrades can be ugly, but only once
> did it fully make my system non-functional. It's kinda of a
> self-regulator: If you can't work apt-get, dpkg (especially dpkg -i
> --force-overwrite) apt-get install -f you might not be able to run Sid,
> then you will not experience Sid in a negative way. Practice in a
> virtual machine, if you can do KVM that would be the full Linux way and
> bring the vm from stable to unstable. When you get it, you can bring
> your box up, if you want.
>
>
>> had to reinstall.
>>
>
> No, you just did not know how to fix it, but from your perspective, it
> amounts to the same thing.
>
> Next time, post the error messages from dpkg, or apt-get, I and many
> more who know more then me can assist you, plus there is a debian-user
> mailing list.
>
>
>> won't do
>> that again. All just to get chromium-browser without having to manually
>> install dependencies. Oh well, live and learn.
>>
>> Overall it has been a great experience. I will keep on truckin'.
>>
>> Thanks for all the help.
>>
>> Joshua
>>
>> wolf at wolfhalton.info wrote:
>>
>>> I use the group approach, then all I have to do is add accounts to the
>>> admin group to make them sudoers.
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> *From*: Damon L. Chesser <damon at damtek.com
>>> <mailto:%22Damon%20L.%20Chesser%22%20%3cdamon at damtek.com%3e>>
>>> *Reply-to*: damon at damtek.com, Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run
>>> Linux! <ale at ale.org>
>>> *To*: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux! <ale at ale.org
>>> <mailto:Atlanta%20Linux%20Enthusiasts%20-%20Yes%21%20We%20run%20Linux%21%20%3cale at ale.org%3e>>
>>> *Subject*: Re: [ale] Losing Ubuntu
>>> *Date*: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 14:12:28 -0400
>>>
>>> On Sun, 2010-08-15 at 13:51 -0400, Damon L. Chesser wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sun, 2010-08-15 at 13:04 -0400, Joshua Roberts wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ah I had forgotten about the su command. I guess I don't really need
>>>>> to deal with any of this. I can just su to root whenever I want to
>>>>> change stuff and then back to my account when I just want to use
>>>>> stuff.
>>>>>
>>>>> And I tried editing the kernel parameters and I kept getting Error 11
>>>>> unrecognized command or something like that. I think I will stick
>>>>> with the su instead of using sudo.
>>>>>
>>>> Well, seeing the other responses to your sudo/su/root question, I am
>>>> wondering if I am right, at least I am covered, I did say "IIRC".
>>>>
>>> Some more thoughts on su vs sudo: Since you went to the trouble of
>>> disabling root login, you might want to use sudo: Every instance of
>>> sudo is tracked in the logs, who invoked it, what command was run, but
>>> su is NOT covered. It will only show foo became root, then it will show
>>> you root ran bar (maybe), but not who was root when bar was run. Visudo
>>> is really easy, just the vi portion is hard, and then only if you don't
>>> know how to use vi. The one liner I showed you in an earlier post will
>>> work for you. If you wanted to be fancy you could use a group instead
>>> of a user name: $wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWORD ALL will allow all users
>>> in the wheel group to use sudo with out a password.
>>> $wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL will allow all users in the wheel group to run any
>>> command from any computer (using ssh) with a password.
>>>
>>> usermod -G $USERNAME wheel will add a user to the group wheel
>>> (substitute the username for $USERNAME) when run as root.
>>>
>>> HTH
>>>
>>>>> Thanks for the help. I will see if I can figure out how to fix some
>>>>> of the other issues I am having, if not I will ask more questions.
>>>>> Thanks for all the help.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Joshua
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Damon L. Chesser <damon at damtek.com <mailto:damon at damtek.com>>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> On Sun, 2010-08-15 at 01:50 -0400, Joshua Roberts wrote:
>>>>> > Well, I have installed Debian with Lxde. I like the openbox
>>>>> desktop.
>>>>> > But here begins the work. I may need to reinstall to make
>>>>> my life
>>>>> > easier. I chose to not allow root login on this machine.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> You still have root access, IIRC (I have never dissallowed
>>>>> root logon my
>>>>> desktop, what's the point?) you just need to su to root then
>>>>> run
>>>>> "visudo"
>>>>>
>>>>> add a line that says this:
>>>>>
>>>>> $USERNAME ALL=(ALL) ALL
>>>>>
>>>>> substitute your username for $USERNAME. visudo takes the same
>>>>> commands
>>>>> as vi. Save, log out, log in, test with sudo ifconfig
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> > It also seems that I, joshua the user, am not allowed to
>>>>> access the
>>>>> > sudo command. I am not in the sudoers file. First I have
>>>>> seen that.
>>>>> > From what I have read I am going to need to boot into a live
>>>>> CD and
>>>>> > edit the file. Or I can do a minimal boot into /bin/sh and
>>>>> then mount
>>>>> > some stuff that I need to edit the file. Either way it
>>>>> seems like it
>>>>> > is going to be some work.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Does anyone have any tips about how to best accomplish this
>>>>> task of
>>>>> > giving myself sudo access without a huge headache. Maybe I
>>>>> am just
>>>>> > really tired because the instructions for the sudo file look
>>>>> really
>>>>> > confusing. Even worse than Xorg or Xranr. Anyway, I am
>>>>> giong to bed.
>>>>> > I will fight with it some more another day. Until then I
>>>>> will have to
>>>>> > live with what I have since I cannot install anything else.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Yeah for me. I managed to F up my first real linux
>>>>> install. ( After
>>>>> > this experience I do not really count Ubuntu as a serious
>>>>> linux
>>>>> > install.)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> my first Debian install (potato?) took me 30 days to get X up
>>>>> an
>>>>> running. You are doing fine (and Linux is getting
>>>>> exponentially better
>>>>> and easier to configure).
>>>>>
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Joshua
>>>>> >
>>>>> > On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 7:45 PM, Rev. Johnny Healey
>>>>> > <rev.null at gmail.com <mailto:rev.null at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>> > Ubuntu is debian unstable unstable.
>>>>> >
>>>>> >
>>>>> > On Aug 13, 2010 10:47 AM, "jrtroberts"
>>>>> <jrtroberts at gmail.com <mailto:jrtroberts at gmail.com>>
>>>>> > wrote:
>>>>> > > I have decided to stop using ubuntu and Try Debian
>>>>> directly.
>>>>> > Not sure
>>>>> > > how that will affect my linux experience, but I do
>>>>> not see
>>>>> > it being all
>>>>> > > that bad.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > > _______________________________________________
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>>>>> >
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Damon
>>>>> damon at damtek.com <mailto:damon at damtek.com>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Ale mailing list
>>>>> Ale at ale.org <mailto:Ale at ale.org>
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>>>>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
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