Some problems regarding path and X
 

Hello all!

I recently installed slackware 9 and since this is my first linux installation ever im kinda green on the subject :)

My question now is: I'm having some problems starting X as user. When I start X (i run blackbox) and rightclick on "xterm" nothing happens. Same as all the other programs in the list except for mozilla which starts fine.
Now what really boggles my mind is that it used to work real fine until i did something. I was just messing around trying to get my ntfs partitions readable to users (which btw, i didnt get to work, so if you have any tips on that id be grateful too). What I did was just changing around some mount options for my secondary drive in /etc/fstab and then it stopped working(the xterm thingy that is). I of course changed them back to what they were from the beginning so im having a hard time believing that that is the problem.
When i log in as root there are no problems at all with this so I tried to start X and then su -s user and then try to start another xterm from there and I get the reply "Xterm xt error: Cant open display:". Same thing happens when i try to start mozilla from the user xterm in x.

Oh, and when i start X from user and then quit it again the prompt reads something like

"Xterm error: couldnt find xterm:
Reason? not enough tty" or something similar.

Sooo, my question is, what's going on? Im kinda thinking it maybe has something to do with my path variables but now ive set users path to the exact same as root and still no luck :(

Any input on this subject would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, and just one more thing, how (as in which file) do i put the bbsetbg command to set my own background for blackbox, i tried with xinitrc but then it sets the default background over my own...

Regards Peppe.

It doesn't sound like you are having problems starting X. It sounds more like you are having problems getting xterm started from the blackbox menu. Or, have I misunderstood?

The first thing to check is whether you have xterm installed. It is very likely that you do. Try 'which xterm'. It should say something like /usr/X11R6/bin/xterm. If it complains that it can't find it ("no xterm found in...") then try 'find / -name xterm -print'.

If you have xterm installed, the next thing to do is to confirm that blackbox's menu is trying to start xterm correctly. Blackbox stores some of its configuration files in your home directory in a subdirectory called .blackbox. (Notice the leading dot.) Within this directory there is a file called menu. Do a 'less menu' and take a look at the file. How is it calling xterm? If it is not calling the right xterm, use your favorite text editor to change it to direct it to the right xterm. Now try launching xterm again. Did it work?

If not, the exact message you are seeing when you end your X session should help us out a lot. If you are running gpm (type the command 'ps ax' in the console and you should be able to see if it is running) then this should be easy to do. Start X. (How are you doing that, by the way?) Mouse click on the xterm menu item. After xterm fails to launch, hit Ctrl+Alt+F1. Is there a message there that refers to xterm? If there is, left-click drag across the text of the whole error message. Now hit Alt+F7. You should be back in X. Click the middle mouse button in the Quick Reply window, and the error message text should be pasted into the text enty box.

You don't necessarily want your path variable the same as root. root accesses some directories that you don't normally need as a user, /usr/sbin and /sbin for example. On the other side of the coin, very often root does not have /usr/local in his path, and this serves some security purposes. How did you change your $PATH?

To set blackbox's background, take a look at 'man bsetroot'.