Hello all,

I am a new slackware user. I was using slackware as root yesterday and had no problem using pkgtool from the console (I typed in pkgtool and the pkgtool gui opened up). Today, I used adduser with default settings to make a new user for running wine. When I tried installpkg with the wine package though, I got:

Then again when I tried pkgtool:

Am I doing something wrong? Maybe this has something to do with how I setup the new user with adduser

Run the command as root.

installpkg is located in /sbin. This is is root's path but not normally in a user's account path.

Were you trying to use pkgtool & installpkg as your new user? Try as root:
then:
or:

Thank you both. So I tried it again with sudo and I'm wondering if I setup my new user incorrectly.

Brian, I tried:

and it worked.

Hi. brianL suggested you change to root by typing the su command followed by a hyphen. That will work.

I don't use sudo so I can't tell you which file to edit to place the user name in. But, as a learning experience you can find out yourself. Type "man sudo" and it will probably tell you which file to edit (as root). Files related to the command are normally listed at the bottom of the man page.

Normally a configuration file gives you all the details you need to edit that file. If not then additional information is often found in chapter 5 ... use the command "man 5 configfilename" to get details on the format of the file.

I found a tutorial for enabling sudo (modifying sudoer) for my non-root user: http://www.insidesocal.com/click/200...-and-easy.html

Well your user is part of the "wheel" group for sure since you can "su root" (although you only need 'su' by itself).

However, your user doesn't seem to be in the /etc/sudoers file which you'll have to edit via "visudo."

I would read:
Before you attempt to edit it without knowing what to do. I also recommend some Google searching for the sudoers settings. But it seems like you're just going to want to allow your user to run pkgtool and installpkg.

I've never bothered setting up sudo, never thought it was necessary.

I've only set it up on computers that are going to be accessed by other people. I've never set it up on my personal computer either since I generally don't like typing "sudo" for every little thing I need root permissions for.

Hi TommyC7 !

I don't believe that Slack (or Linux?) requires membership in the wheel group for a user to become root. A quick look in /etc/group doesn't show my user in that group and my user account can use the su command successfully.

In another life, in a previous decade, on a UNIX system, I remember wheel membership being a requirement. It's probably still a requirement on other *nix distributions today.

If I'm wrong please correct me. I'm always learning but don't want to leave incorrect information out there to be picked up by others.

I'm not in the wheel group, in fact there is no wheel group by default on my system, but I can use su root or su -.

EDIT
I was wrong, there is a wheel group. Must get my eyes tested.

I don't use sudo, I use only su. I think, using the sudo will decrease the security.

I use sudo a lot because I save time writing the password:

$ sudo su -
# whoami
root

of course there are security issues with sudo.

by default slackware's SU_WHEEL_ONLY option in /etc/login.defs is set to "no",
that makes non wheel group enable to su into root