I am trying to modify the file XF86Config/xorg.conf file in a newly installed SUSE v9.1. I am a VERY newbie, this is my first Linux experience.

I haven't been able to find this file or the directory in which it resides.
<locate xorg.conf> gets the response:
"bash: locate: Command not known". I interpret this as meaning that bash is
indeed installed (which I remember doing), and it is telling me that it
doesn't know what to do with what would seem a very basic command.

Someone has told me that I have first to run another command, updatedb, and
I must do this as root. I have switched by now many times before from my
home directory to root, always without difficulty. Now, however, root comes
up as a FullScreen display of YaST -- no buttons in the righthand corner of
the titlebar, so I can't dismiss it in order to find a terminal without
ending the root session and switching back to my user session. I have no
idea why this Catch-22 behavior has changed. The root sesion also has
forgotten the left-handed mouse configuration that I made for it several
days ago. Things in the root session are not as they were. How can I avoid
the FullScreen YaST display? What has happened to my root configuration?

I am waiting these days for arrival of a SUSE v9.3 disk, so if any of the
above sub-problems are the result of bugs in v9.1, they will soon be fixed.
But I would like to be sure that they are indeed because of bugs in v9.1.

Have you looked in /etc/X11/ directory for what your looking for ?

Of course.

BTW, in your tagline, there should be no apostrophe before the word "men". "Men" is not a contraction.

The apostrophe has been re-located, thanks for pointing that out. I was wondering why the good folks at the spelling bee were sniggering all through this years week long shindig at the European Punctuation Convention

It happens in the best regulated families. Nevertheless, I will never forget that I had to correct the spelling of a Scot in quoting Bobby Burns. This is the kind of opportunity that doesn't arise every day, or indeed in everyone's life.

FYI. I believe that for suse, the locate command is in the find-utils package. When it is installed you can run as root 'updatedb' to create the database that the locate command uses. Otherwise, the files will be scanned around 2 in the morning automatically. The scan will be performed either by root or by an imaginary user named 'nobody' depending on which security level you are using.. ( They actually made a movie about him, "A Man Called Nobody". The first precursor of the Trinity series. )

Thats right, and it is not installed per default. To be more specific, the package is called 'findutils-locate'.

But to get back to your first problem: unless you didn't install XOrg, SUSE 9.1 used XFree86, so the configuration file you are looking for is called /etc/X11/XF86Config. If you can avoid it, don't do manual editing. Try sax2 first! (YaST -> Hardware -> Graphics Card and Monitor).

To run commands like updatedb, it is better to run them from the users graphical environment with root permissions. The command 'sudo updatedb' will do this for example. I remember a security setting that prevents root to login the graphical environment (instead you get YaST). However, I don't remember the setting to be changed. Try something in /etc/X11/xdm or /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager.

Thanks. This looks very helpful. I'll try it tomorrow -- it's now coming on 0200 here now, and I'm bushed.

Personally, BTW, I think it's dirty pool that simple commands of this sort are not implemented by default.. And that there is not a large sign invorming you that by default you can do virtually nothing with the CLI. What are they thinking?

Generally I agree. However in the case of locate, I see some good reasons for not making it a standard tool. It only works with updatedb, which is a time and CPU consuming process, that has almost locked an older machine of mine. There is also the question of choice between slocate and locate, which is less secure (it will find files, even if the user has no right to see them.