did you do a full install? did you install any desktops? what's in ~/.xinitrc?

I tend to think that I did a full install. I figured I would download the DVD iso on the getslack page so that I would have everything that slackware is meant to have when i first started.

from / as root, I attempted to type

ls ~/.xinitrc

which returned
/root/.xinitrc

if you can only be root, type vim /home/<user>/.xinitrc (replacing <user> with actual username, of course).

is this:
correct?

"/dev/hdb2"
this means you installed all of linux to a single (the second) partition on the second (slave) drive of your first IDE controller.

can you:

cat /etc/fstab

? and post please

/dev/hdb3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb2 / ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom auto noauto, owner, ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto, owner 0 0
/devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5, mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

I think you said you did this? what is the output now of:

ls -l /home
ls -l /home/*

? please.

its been a long time since I used a single partition for everything, it may be a problem that the 'defaults' for the root partition is read only?

Listen, I've used Red Hat Linux 9 and Ubuntu for about 1.5 years, yeah.. it's been fun but I want to move on to something more advanced. Ubuntu seems like a toy with the Synaptic Manager spoon feeding you everything. Will Slackware be good to move on to? I already know the basics of Linux.

I wouldn't be surprised if my root partition was read only. Anyway, here's what I've got:


total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2006-08-06 21:50 ftp/
drwx--x--x 2 philgamesh users 2007-06-19 13:57 philgamesh/
drwx--x--x 2 sean users 2007-06-17 15:11 sean/


ftp/, philgamesh/, and sean/ are all in blue.

adding the star tells us the following:

/home/ftp:
total 0

/home/philgamesh:
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 philgamesh users 0 2007-06-15 11:20 xinitrc

/home/sean:
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5059 2007-06-17 22:07 sh



the sean thing seems pretty odd to me, but what do I know, right?

is your user 'sean' ?

this ownership is wrong, the files in there should belong to 'sean, users'

you say you cant run _any_ commands as a regular user?

Sean is my brother and he was screwing around with something in x. That may have something to do with it, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I haven't successfully run any commands as a regular user, but then, the only commands I've tried to run have pretty much come from this list. I've been trying to get x working, because I figured I ought to screw around with a gui before I tried to tackle the inner workings of the bourne shell. What should I try in the shell to test things out, and also, what should I do to get sean to say sean, users?

At this point, do you think I ought to try repartitioning and reinstalling? If so, how do I prevent it from installing as read only?

if changing the root:root permissions on sean doesn't work, that's exactly what i was going recommend next. it's a new install that you haven't really done anything with yet, so you might as well just reinstall at this point. you might actually save yourself some time. you'll also end up with a better configuration in the end anyway (imho -- separate /home partition is a good thing).

definitely. it sounds like slackware would be perfect for you.

I'd echo that here. Sorry we haven't found a better solution, but something is really screwy about this install.

just select a full install, then make the first things you do this:

cfdisk # my preference

and create separate partitions for / and /home (there are other/better ways too but don't worry about those for now, unless you want to <this is slackware of course...>

(as root)
xorgsetup # configure X
alsaconf # config sound
alsamixer # to unmute sound
alsactl store # save mixer settings
adduser # add your user

(exit root login)


i hate to recommend reinstalling, but I don't know what else you could try. somewhere all your file/user permissions got screwed up and yeah, since you're still playing around and havent done anything to your box its likely a lot easier to just start over.

whatever, the problem sure isn't obvious to me at this point.