Hi Everyone,

Just a couple of comments. I have been a Slack user for a little less than 2 weeks now and my reasons for installing it were to use its power and lack of "hand holding" for learning linux in its purest form. But, is the system so sensitive to every kerystroke that a novice like shouldn't use it?

Many know of the adverntures I have had of late trying to learn Slack and learn how to fix problems. So many have been so kind to help, I certainly don't want anyone to misinterpret my comments as disparaging the OS. I am not, on the contrary, in the beginning it looked like just what I need to learn linux properly. But, yet again, I appear to have broken it, and this time from some very innocent hacking. I was simply trying to install libgphoto2 to connect to my digital camera. After one attempt at:

$ installpkg libgphoto2-2.......

I can no longer access the X window with the error:

"No write access to /home/bob" .XAuthority

I know this is something to do with permissions (don't know what at this point), but I have somehow locked myself out of the X window (KDE) and I wasn't even root!

I truly would like to continue to use Slack, because, well, I liked it. But, even though I am trying to learn from the bottom up, if I can break the system so easily, I have to wonder if I should be using something a little more "idiot" friendly.

I am sure I will figure this one out, too, but sometimes breaking things so easily is just a nuisance, not learning.


Thanks for all your help,

Bob

I just want to say I feel your pain, i broke this several times in less then 4 days, most of it was a Lilo issue, but its fun to break and fix eh?

2 things:
1) It's not normal to be able to install a package as non root user, probably trying as non-root, it untarred the package and changed permissions acording to that.
2) As root, it's very easy to break a system, just type: rm -rf / <---- DON'T DO THIS, IT'S A EXAMPLE

I've had something like that happen intermittently when I run the following as root:
I only need the merge once every month or so so I just change (as root) the ownership back.

If you can get to a terminal, login as root and change the ownership of /home/bob/.XAuthority back to bob with:
I'm assuming there's a group called bob as well.

What does it do?

Bob,

log in as root and issue:
assuming that bob is your username and /home/bob is your home folder.

rm = remove files/directories

-rf = do it recursively and don't prompt me for confirmations.

/ = the root folder - ie the very top of the filesystem

It erases the entire contents of all your drives.

It's analogous to doing "format c:\" or "deltree c:\" on windows (havn't touched a winbox in ages so that may not be /exactly/ right.

As gbonhevi said, don't even think about it!

Hi everyone,

Thank you once again. I am sure my frustration came out in my original post. And, once again, your recommendations have fixed it. I have worked with permissions and changing them a number of times, but this eluded me. Nothing was working. I could still startx with root, but just as you have so eloquently pointed out, I did not want to be playing around on the desktion as root.

It is strange though, I have studied the package installation system for Slackware, but I have not been able to use it. I WAS able to install one application using the old tradition method of ./configure,make,make install, but have never gotten intstallpkg to work. Swaret is the update tool, as I understand it, but I have not been able to install that because the one available to download on the net is corrupted (it ends in .tar, and using the instructions to rename to .tgz appraently corrupts it because it will not install.

If there is an alternative method to updating/upgrading my current system (.i.e. installing system "current", I would appreciate the instructions.

Again, thanks for all your help.

Bob

.tar is not the same as .tgz. Well, yes but no :P
.tgz Slackware packages are actually .tar.gz files (I mean the compression method) but mostly the content is not the same. You've to be sure you're getting a Slackware package to be able to use installpkg/upgradepkg/removepkg succesfully.
So how do you know that? Well, usually it's stated on the site you're downloading the program, it will say something like "Slackware package", "binary" or "source" the latest two, can't be used with Slackware install tools.
A good place with exclusive Slackware packages is http://linuxpackages.net .

To upgrade to current "manually", just go to http://slackware.com/changelog/current.php?cpu=i386 , there you've the changelog with the packages that have been updated and the details.
Then goto some Slackware-current mirror and get the new packages. You have the mirror list here: http://slackware.com/getslack/
A slackware-current mirror I usually use is: http://ftp.belnet.be/packages/slackw...kware-current/

You're welcome

Edit: Forgot to say, you'll mostly notice you've a Slackware package by opening the .tgz file and seeing if it contains a directory called install/ with at least a file called slack-desc and usually another called doinst.sh
And the files inside it are organized according to the place where they should go, like usr/bin/something, the whole directory structure must be there.

Thank you for that. You are right,I did see those items when I was trying to install Swaret. I also saw
doinst.sh, which I assumed was a shell script and attempted to run it thusly: sh doinst.sh. Would not run with the instructions to rename the files. I will have to study that some more before I attempt it again..

Your information is very helpful. Thank you.

Bob

Note that in Slack you don't necessarily have to install packages via the command line. If you prefer, you can just download the .tgz then use KPackage to install it. To get to KPackage, just System > KPackage

As an aside, if you are looking for Slack packages, definitely bookmark LinuxPackages Have fun

Just for clarity, Swaret is not the update tool for Slack, it is a third party package management software, just like slapt-get.

When you say you've never gotten installpkg to work, what did you mean? What errors (if any) have you gotten while trying to use it?

I suggest you create an empty folder to play with, change there and unpack any package with "explodepkg name-of-the-package.tgz". Look what it is extracting (explodepkg won't install it, you will do no harm to your system ) and you will see how a slackware package is constructed. You may take a look at the install script doinst.sh which in most cases will only create some symbolic links.
You might even go further and try to create your own slackbuild files (shell scripts that automate the process of building a package from source).

In the beginning I srewed up my Slackware installation quite often and reinstalled it several times. But these experiences led me to a stable system and the knowledge to handle most every day problems on my own -- and I still have the freedom to screw it up on my own

I find that Slackware itself is very hard to break. It's known for its rock-solid stability. However, it can be hard to get things set up just the way you like. And for me too, in the beginning, I must reinstalled Slack what seemed like every other day. But I was determined to figure it out. Now, I sort of know what I am doing with Slack and it is like a rock to me. It does not break and runs forever.

You will appreciate this learning process once you've gotten through this initial trial-and-error phase, trust me. You will learn more about Linux while using Slackware than most every other distributions, IMHO. Stick with it -- it's worth it.

Thanks to everyone for replying. I am having difficulty grasping the install process. Everything I have read here is indeed happening (doinst.sh is creating symbolic links, but I have no idea what to do with them from there}.

I was trying to install libgphoto2 so that I could install gphoto2 for my camera. I never was successful. When I look at installed packages, it is listed, but when trying to ./configure gphoto2, it fails saying it can't find libgphoto2. I had similar problems in Fedora when I first started using it, but finally figured it out and I am sure I will here too. The process is all very new to me coming from Fedora (yum was almost idiot proof.) Some of it is almost as foreign feeling as coming from Windows to Linux, but it is all part of the learning process.

Thank you all for all your help and suggestions.

Bob