hello,
my first and most immediate problem is when i try and log into the root account i get the funny little message but no prompt, then the system hangs for about 30 seconds and kicks me back to the login prompt (im positive i am entering the correct login info for root). however i can log in to a normal user account. some other useful information my be that i have been editing the '~.xinitrc' file.

my second problem is with that normal user account. i have created '~.bashrc' and '~.bash_profile' in the home folder and added commands to them. however, when i log into the account, it seems it is still reading the global '/etc/profile' (i have tested this by changing the user prompt line of the '/etc/profile'). again, i have been editing the '.xinitrc' file (for this account), which i actually transfered over from the root accounts home folder, but i have given everyone RWX permissions to the file.

as you can see im in a bit of a mess, any help is appreciated.

Hi,

1) What 'funny little message' are you getting?

2) /etc/profile is 'always' read, creating a ~/.bashrc and/or ~/.bashr_profile are there to create/change some local (private for that user) settings. See man bash (the INVOCATION part) for details.

the messages are right after logging in, alot of them are quotes by famous people, id like to be able to switch this off too

i have a line in my '~.bash_profile' ('source ~.bashrc') which then (should) execute all the commands in the .bashrc file, which includes a custom prompt string command, but it doesnt seem to work, although i have had this working in the past

I assumed that he meant the fortune message, which would indicate that he did successfully log in, the system just failed to give him a usable prompt.

I have always used .bash_profile under Slackware, never .bashrc. You might want to try just using bash_profile to load your user-specific settings. As for the xinitrc file, that shouldn't have anything to do with the current problems you are having since obviously that is a component of X. It shouldn't even be read when you are logging into the console.

Dunno how to fix whatever has been messed up, but to uninstall fortune, 'removepkg' the bsd-games package.

Don't know if it's a typo but you should have 'source ~/.bashrc' or '. ~/.bashrc'

If you don't want the fortune messages, just do:

chmod -x /etc/profile.d/bds-games-login-fortune.sh

'removepkg bsdgames' is a bit ott and not necessary.

Unless, of course, you don't play any of the BSD games, it which case you just save some space.

thanks for your suggestions everyone

i *think* ive worked it out. when i log into the root account and type 'echo $SHELL' i get '/bin/bash'. when i log into a normal user account and type 'echo $SHELL' i get '/bin/sh', which indicates the shell is the BOURNE shell. and so may not look at the '.bash_profile' on login ??. how would i set the bash shell as the default shell for normal users?

to modify an existing user you can use the command

usermod -s /bin/bash username

or edit /etc/passwd to make the change for users there

I'm not sure how to set it as the default when you are creating a user, but you can specify it with useradd just like usermod.

sn9ke_eyes, i edited the '/etc/passwd' file and put '/bin/bash' at the end of the users line. now everytime i log in as that user i get bash as my default login shell, and subsequent shells, and now the commands in the '.bash_profile' and the '.bashrc' are being read and executed, so everything works. thanks again