three newbie problems. (slack 9)
 

Okay I'm a total Newb, but I want to learn commandline linux badly, so bear with me :)

1. 'useradd' does not use /home/username by default (so I guess it doesn't use the other default values either, but I couldn't check that). If you can't trust the man pages who CAN you trust? (I installed Slack 3 times just for the hell of it, since it was so easy, and three times I had this problem)

2. none of the 'halt' commands causes my computer to shut down (even though some things are powered down... keyboard stops listening, harddrive stops, but screen and all fans keep working. Let me tell you, it's a stupid sight seeing 'power off' or somesuch thing sitting there on bottom of my screen!

3. NVidia Unified Driver Package. (I have a Shuttle sn41g2. That's an NForce² mobo) NVidia offers three sorts of downloads. A source rpm, a normal rpm and a tar.gz file.
Since Slack expressly does not support rpms, (or am I mistaken?) I chose the tar.gz file and copied it to my /temp. I unzipped it, installed it (is this the right way to go about installing stuff? does it automatically end up in the right folders?) and ended up at the next boot with an enormous amount (well, not really, 10 or so) error messages about the i810 sound. WTF? So, okay, the computer still worked, but I still couldn't select the right 'nvidia' vga driver for my onboard graphics (though 'nv' and 'geforce' work normally, while they didn't in Mandrake 8.?) and sound quality has NOT gone up. Did I do something wrong? has anyone had any experience with these drivers?

I have a couple more questions, but i'd be grateful if these three could be answered first.

Well, what a coincidence, I'm a newbie too! :) Let me come up with some blah-blah that might be of help...


1. I never used the "useradd" command, so I don't know about that, but how about the "adduser" command? It certainly worked for me (i.e. creates /home/username).

2. I had that "problem" too, until I recompiled the kernel to have ACPI support. Then your box will have the power to turn itself off. :) Don't know about APM and such though...

3. I'll leave this one to someone with NVIDIA hardware, but one thing...most likely you have to compile the contents of the tarball. :D


I'll let the gurus take over from here...

Users are added with the adduser program. We'll start out by going through the whole procedure, showing all the questions that are asked and a brief description of what everything means. The default answer is in the brackets, and can be chosen for almost all the questions, unless you really want to change something.

# adduser
Login name for new user (8 characters or less) []: jellyd

this is from slackware essentials book, if you are trying to do this by "useradd" it won't work............

and "power off" means just that, you have to Physically turn your machine off.......slackware is shut down, you just have to hit the button on your box.........this is not windows, so it wont turn off automagically.

Thanks for your help :)

:) about 3: I just followed NVidia's instructions...

But thanks, I'll give 'adduser' a try. Sounds like it's a script or so. Still, I'm not comfortable with useradd not working. I mean, I used it because I was following the text of a tutorial I found around the net, and it didn't work as advertised in the man pages... strange.

And the new kernel, now that'll have to wait until I have a little more time on my hands ;)

Greetings,

D.

In reply to 320mb; linux WILL turn the computer off automagically, if you have ACPI support. :) You just have to enable it in the BIOS and in the kernel. I only have to press the power button when I cold boot.

As far as shutting down is concerned, ACPI support is already enabled in default bare.i kernel, one thing to do is to uncomment proper line in modules.conf. It causes proper kernel module to load during startup, so classical "shutdown -h now" will automagically turn off computer (naturally this function must be enable in BIOS).

That's _really_ weird :) my /etc/modules.conf is empty after a full install of Slack 9. Nothing I can uncomment :)

EDIT: side question: where do I find root's session config file? (in other words, what is it called?) cause I want to config my other users like root's configured because I like the way Slackware auto-configures some things like colors and mount points etc... :) or is there a configuration script as well? (not in the book)

One more noob question from me: I use init 0 to shutdown the machine. What is the difference between init 0 and /sbin/shutdown -h now?

It does exactly the same I think...

I noticed that ;)
I am curious if there are any *real* differences between them, and if not why somebody will use shutdown.
Or shutdown -r now instead of init 6...

adduser is just a script that makes adding users easier. You could use useradd but then would have to create the home dir and assign groups to the user manually. I'm not sure if Patrick Volkerding wrote the scrip himself but it does works really nice.

Fjiga

Sorry, mistake. Not modules.conf, but modules.rc or rc.modules (I have no Linux computer right now and I don't remember exact file name). Anyway, it is located in startup scripts directory.

it should be
/etc/rc.d/rc.modules

ACPI...there are a few options you'll need to add in the kernel config...see This Thread

:)

Just enabling apm in rc.modules was enough. Still have the problems with my nvidia drivers, though. I guess I'll have to ask around at the linux forum of nforcershq.com...

greetings :)

BTW, check out my new thread (about loadlin)

D.