I'm new to Slack (previously used mandrake, now I have slack 9.1), I got this kind of problems:
1.
When I'm root all applications are working perfectly, but when I login as normal user some of them crash or don't launch, other behave strange, some functions don't work etc., as example:
Mozilla 1.4 - you can only launch browser, other modules like mail, address book, irc don't work, you cannot choose them from the bottom panel of Mozilla.
Abiword - it closes after launch
Galeon - just after launch, window appears with mesage that application has crashed

I suspect it's something with permissions. Only non-root users suffer from this problem. Do yuo have any idea how can I solve it.

2. I've got sound using ALSA (my soundcard is VIA 8325 Avance Logic ALC650) and it worked fine, but one day I've lost it in strange situation. I was playing some MP3 on xmms and I launched alsamixer to adjust volume. When I was changing the volume of "VIA DXS" item, the sound disappeared and I can't get it back.


Thanks for any help and sorry for my not too good english
Phil

it certainly is a permissions problem. Could be many things though. Maybe the files cannot read the config files, cannot access some libs that they need, etc. It probably helps to launch those apps from a terminal window and see if you get any useful error messages.

I've got sound back, so the second problem is no more.
Thanks for your reply, I will check the libs permissions and tell if it helped :-)

Phil

Perhaps your partition is filling up? Root still works because it has space reserved for it.

It's rather impossible, because I have around 13 GB free.
I've launched applications from terminal, as "quatsch" advised. It's not too helpful in this case, because programs do not give useful errors. For example:

Abiword: "Aborted"
Galeon "Missing bookmark file, using default one"
Mozilla - no message, crash

If I don't find a way out from this situation, I will have to install slack once again.

:-(((

Does it help to chage the permissions on the directories those programs are installed? Start out with giving reading permisisons to everyone:

chmod -R a+r {path to where the prog is installed}

Do this as root. The -R indicates recursive, so that the permisisons in the whole directory and its subdirectory get changed. The +r stands for add reading permission ('a' for all). You can give write permission by +w and execute permissions by +x

I found the reason why the applications are crashing. Few days ago I imported some True Type fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana using tool from KDE (font installer).
When I log as root, the tool lists instaled fonts, but when I log as normal user and launch this tool, there are no fonts on the list.

How can I fix this problem?


Phil

Problem solved!!!! :-)
Permissions on fonts were wrong (only root could read them).
Now everything is working correctly on normal user.

Thanks for help
Phil

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