Hey,

I'm pretty new to Linux, though I've very casually used it off and on for a few years. But I've decided to finally make the move from Windows and I thought it would be a great learning experience to try Linux From Scratch.

Well, it sure has been a great experience so far. I decided to use the User Package Management System (which may have a bearing on my problem) on this first time through (it's the one where each package that you install is done so under a different user and so on, it's also the one they talk about in the LFS book).

All has gone well until now. I've got a good system installed with X, Fluxbox and KDE all working. I even have got my wireless working (via ndiswrapper) and some other stuff. But I've got to the point where I really wanted to start using this system in my everyday life, so I thought I'd create a normal (non-root) account and this is where I've run into problems.

The new user account seems to work okay until I try to run X. When I do this I get the following error.

Cannot move old log file /var/log/Xorg.0.log to /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old

Now, I CAN change the permissions on the /var/log folder to let anyone do anything to it (likely a bad idea) and X will load past this point. But it will then fail later down the line in the loading process. So the problem has something to do with the way I've set up this user.

Also, I checked a Gentoo installation and the /var/log seems to have the same permissions that my folder has, so that's not it. Like I said, it's got to be something with the way I've set up the user, or X or something.

Maybe I've just simply forgotten something very basic and boneheaded, something that is just assumed everyone should know.

Right now I'm back in Window (in VISTA no less) writing this because I don't like surfing the net as root. It's very depressing.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bob

Oh yeah, running X as root works just fine, as does everything else when running as root. It's only when I run X as a normal user that I have problems.

Thanks,

Bob

Now that's impressive. Kudos.

Anyway it sounds as if the X binary has inappropriate permissions. Find $XORG_PREFIX/bin/X and ensure it is owned by root:root and has 6755 permissions (rwsr-sr-x).

I'm just going by X on my system. I didn't have to change any permissions manually. It may well have something to do with the "User Package Management System". If it is what I think it is (will do some reading later), then you may run into more problems with programs that have to run suid.

Daws,

Thank you for answering my post. Unfortunately, changing the permissions on my X executable does not seem to fix the problem.

Can you think of anything else that might cause this?

Thanks,

Bob

I take it you've installed both X and kde and fluxbox (and probably everything else in blfs) with the root account?

I'm having the same problems (can't start kde as a normal user) and I'm guessing it has something to do with the way I installed everything (as root instead of normal user like the book said)

Jwizzman,

Hey that’s a good idea, but I installed all my packages under what they call a “package user,” a different user for each package. So, for instance, I installed X using the “Xorg-6_9_0" user and so on.

There has to be some way that you set up the “users” group that the book doesn’t cover or something. At least, that is what I’m thinking right now.

Bob

This note is for DAWS.

DAWS, your ROCK!! I don't know what I was thinking before, I swear I tried you suggestion correctly, but I guess I didn't. Anyway, after struggling for awhile after you made you suggestion I came back and tried it again (actaully for the first time, but I thought it was 'again') and everything worked fine. So thank you for all your help!

I've had to make similar changes to kde to get it to run with normal user too.

Anyway, thanks!

Bob