OpenBSD 3.1 newbie help (lots o' questions)

glock19 · 06-21-2002, 04:43 AM

Well, I finally got the thing installed. I just used a giant / partition and a swap partition and that worked.

First thing when my PC boots up, I get this error message:

Code:

 Jun 20 20:28:39 fern sm-mta[7772]: unable to qualify my own domain name (fern) -- using short name
Jun 20 20:30:01 fern sm-msp-queue[18428]: My unqualified host name (fern) unknown; sleeping for retry
Jun 20 20:31:01 fern sm-msp-queue[18428]: unable to qualify my own domain name (fern) -- using short name

So what does all that mean? Do I *need* a fully qualified domain name, or can I just keep my machine name the way it is?

Next thing. I go to login as root. I get an error message that says:

Quote:

Don't login as root, use su

That sounds reasonable. So I add a user, and then exit and re-login as that user. I go to do a su root, and I get the following error:

Quote:

you are not in group wheel
Sorry

What's up with that? What is the group wheel? I need to figure that out so don't have to login as root!

Anyhow, the next question. Is the "sh" shell the same as bash? I didn't see "bash" as any of the shell options when I was creating my user, so I just picked the default "sh". It seems pretty similar to the bash that I use in linux, just wondering what the difference is between sh and bash.

Next question. This is a big one. I installed all the packages. I want to go into X. I tried to configure with "xf86config" but the default directory for the XF86Config file doesn't even exist! Why would the default location of the configuration file for XFree86 not even be present on OpenBSD 3.1? So, I need a bit of help if anyone has any pointers on how to get X set up on OpenBSD. Thanks.

llama_meme · 06-21-2002, 05:10 AM

Disclaimer: I have only used NetBSD and FreeBSD, but I think I can help with your root problem...

In *BSD only users who belong to the wheel group are allowed to su to root (as an extra security measure / draconian tool of sysadmin oppression depending on your politics). Just make sure you add any new users you create to the wheel group, as well as their main group (whose name is conventionally the same as their username). You'll then be able to su normally.

sh is /not/ the same as bash, it is an implementation of the original sh, and lacks features such as command history (at least it does on NetBSD and FreeBSD). The C shell (tcsh or csh) is the standard shell on BSD systems; use that. For everyday use, you'll find there's nothing much different between csh and bash, but you can of course add bash to your system through the ports collection if you like.

Alex

glock19 · 06-21-2002, 06:16 AM

Ok, I can su to root now. Thanks.

How come when I am root, I get a prompt like this:

Code:

fern#

But when I am my regular user, I get a prompt like this:

Code:

(By the way, I edited my /etc/passwd file so my regular user is now using /bin/csh.)

llama_meme · 06-21-2002, 08:42 AM

It's just so you can easily see when you're root and when you're not, nothing vey significant about it.

glock19 · 06-21-2002, 08:51 AM

Ok, just a couple remaining questions (for now anyway

)

1. What are those "unable to qualify" errors and what can I do to resolve the problem?

2. How shall I get X configured and running?

Thanks for all the help!

Blackknight · 06-28-2002, 02:46 AM

Hi !
Your unqualified errors are fired by sendmail. It seems that your hostname is not of the form host.domain. I think that if you modify it like glock19.glock19.org for example, it should now work without error.
Hope it helps.

sancho5 · 07-02-2002, 05:03 PM

run 'hostname'

then run 'cat /etc/hosts'

the error usually indicates that you've given your host a name that is not in the hosts file or DNS somewhere.

For instance, if my FQDN is testbox.example.com, I should have the following entry in /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 testbox.example.com testbox

The problem you're seeing is that your host has a name that it can't resolve to an IP. Fix your /etc/hosts and you should be OK.

Also on a side note, read the documentation. OpenBSD excels in their documentation and manpages. All of these types of questions are answered in the openbsd faq or system manpages. See http://www.openbsd.org/faq and 'man man' for more details.

pickledbeans · 07-02-2002, 05:24 PM

First OpenBSD is probly to least user friendly Unix OS there.

Second, Theo & kids are the least user friendly group you can find ...i.e. do you home work before posting.

Third, OpenBSD is considered to be the most secrure Unix OS out there.

That being said here are a few suggestions:

man afterboot, will provide you with some intro information.

By default Korn shell is also installed "/bin/ksh" you can
change you shell by typeing chsh -s /bin/ksh, which is what I would do. Korn is the standard "production" shell
for Unix. Bash is great, and mostly compatable with Korn
but isn't widely used outside of the free *nix community.

You can also change default useradd profile so that it uses Korn (or Bash) for new accounts.

You can change you prompts in you .profile or .bash_profile. Mine looks like this:

export PS1='$PWD
$(uname -n):$LOGNAME %'

What this gives you is current dir, hostname and login name.

New to vi? Create a file called .exrc :

set showmode
set showmatch
set tabstop=3