As for Samba, I'm about ready to flip! I just set it up in Psyche (still with the exact same smb.conf file I had that worked fine before), and now it's not allowing writes to vfat shares, either. I just checked my permissions on the /sharedc folder, and they were read/write/execute for root and read/execute for everyone else. In fstab, I switched "defaults" for "umask=000" (which somehow sets the mask to 777, where umask=777 sets the mask to 000), and I also updated Samba with up2date. No dice. I set the permissions on the mounted folder on the client system to 777, no cigar. I added all users to all groups in smbusers. Login was a little different, but still can't write to that one directory. I have no problem writing to the Ext3 share. Windows clients can't write to the vfat share, though everyone can write to it when I start Windows on the server. It's definitely on the server end, but the stupid thing is that smb.conf, smbusers, smbpasswd, and fstab are all the same. Plus, when I set it up before, I never had to use smbpasswd -a for anyone, since it's a guest only share. I'm gonna go nuts if I try configuring it anymore. This is a totally fresh install of Psyche, and when I did a totally fresh install of Psyche on the twin computer next to it and used the same smb.conf file (except changing filenames), everything worked fine. I'm sure it's my own fault, but instead of f'ing with it anymore, I'm just gonna resign myself to it. I end up with a few choices...stay in Windows (haha), move all my data to the system that works, or (my preference) convert the vfat *back* to ext3 *again*. Initially, I set it up as vfat so that I would be able to access the data every time I go into Windows, and the shares would still be active. Since I only went into Windows once in the last four months (actually, a guest went into Windows so that he could play Civilization...again, haha!), I'm just gonna switch over to Ext3. Ext3 kicks butt anyway. I'll probably set the directory and create masks to 777 and set forceuser to root, tho, since most of the users share data with eachother. Plus, I don't wanna stick a file on the share and then not be able to share it since nobody else is "root" as far as Samba is concerned. Anyway, I digress. That's Psyche. It seems unlikely that it's a Shrike problem, unless it actually modified the vfat partition. Shrike workstations still have the problem with just sitting there, doing nothing after mounting a share (possibly what's causing systems to not boot up). When I run smbmount, it mounts the drive, but it stays in the same process until I press ctrl-c. It still mounts the share every time, though. In my rc.local file, I usually add the smbmount lines, and when it hangs up on those, I can't do ctrl-c. I'll let you know if I ever figure out what's going wrong. > You should never run as root on your system unless doing maintenance > tasks, there is no good reason to do so :) > I would agree, only use root when needed, never any other time. I thank you for your input and your help, but I'm getting tired of everyone (and every program) saying not to run as root. I understand the virtues of separating levels of execution (which is what makes the kernel so much stronger than Windows' "Let's give Calculator the ability to mess with the partition table if it wants to," philosophy.) On all the workstation systems here, each user knows his root's password, so if they want to screw stuff up, they can. (Of course that does open up access for malicious code, but we're simply careful about what programs we run. Plus, all the data is backed up regularly, and no sensitive data is available on the network.) What really gets on my nerves, running as user, is when I am in the middle of something and need to get root access. Like, when I'm in Nautilus and I carefully select a bunch of files that I want to copy. I go to the destination folder and try to paste them, but the paste command doesn't show up. Then I realize that the directory is under someone else's name, so I su and type nautilus from the terminal. I right click to paste, but it doesn't have the same files on the clipboard, since now it's someone else's clipboard, so now I have to re-open the source folder and start over again. I can kinda deal with that myself, but having to guide family members over the phone "Open a terminal, enter 'su', enter the root password, type nautilus or konqueror..." Wanna burn a CD? Gotta enter that root password. Besides that, considering that everyone here is proficient enough to install their own software, they now must type a password every time they want to do anything. Why isn't there a "remember password" like a couple other popular distro's have? No matter, running as root works perfectly for all my needs (except that sometimes I actually find programs that refuse to install as root, preaching about the dangers of running as root). Running as root isn't for everyone, but it's not "not for anyone". Eventually, programs may become more user-friendly (so to speak) so that they can switch to root control by simply entering a password. Linux is organized much better for security, and I appreciate it, such as making programs "ask" the kernel to do things instead of "telling" the processor what to do. I like, and in fact, completely agree with file ownership and permissions, but I would also like to see global ownership work just as well for systems that need reliability and not necessarily security (since running as root opens up the possibilities for viruses, though still very very unlikely that any viruses can effectively propagate.) Overall, I'm pleased with how well most stuff works using /root instead of /home/user. Most games these days simply give a warning one time that running as root will save settings in the /root directory instead of the /home/user directory. > put it in /root/.bashrc maybe? YAY!! COOL! Thank you, thank you, thank you...you don't know how many scripts I tried piggybacking into! (Now to get xscreensaver to write to root's .xscreensaver file instead of nobody's.) Only one hickup...it adds localhost every time I open a terminal. I can live with that. :-p Perhaps if I can find the .xsession equivalent, I can have it run xhost +localhost right before opening the window manager. I have never been able to figure out the GNOME search-for-files command. I give it files in locations I know are there, like ".xscreensaver" in "/root", and it doesn't find it. Does it absolutely refuse to find hidden files? That can't be the case. When I search for ".xscreensaver" in "/", I get one match...the .xscreensaver file in /slackware/root. > Stick with 9, just don't bother prelinking :) Works great here... Sorry, won't work...at least not on the server / my computer. :-( I'm not gonna bother prelinking, tho, that's for sure. Has anyone done so with success? If so, did it make a measurable difference? I don't much like the idea of "if it doesn't work, just don't do it". I read that a few other people are having the same problems after prelinking. I don't think I can stick with 9 here. Actually, I've got Slackware running on the server as well (I have Win98, Slackware 9, RedHat 8.0, and RedHat 9 installed on the server.) Slackware is doing fine as a server. (..and doing surprisingly well at other stuff, too. I'm impressed with how mature it is as an OS! I thought it was gonna be like the hundreds of other 1 CD distro's whose mottos are "Small size, few features", but instead it has been able to compile everything I've thrown at it, comes equipped with everything except a video player, and detects all the hardware in the house perfectly. Even Gnome starts stuff lightning fast, though strangely, everything seems to *run* slower.) If you're wondering where my allegiance and preference stand, I'm in RedHat 8.0 here right now, and three quarters of the computers here run Shrike. Only two computers here even have non-RedHat distro's on them. Besides, I wanna play Transgaming WineX compatible games. ;-D Apparently they haven't introduced the --with-nptl option. (This brings up a few questions. Anyone know, is it because Wine is now Lesser GPL? Is Wine's LGPL why Shrike doesn't have it? Or was --with-nptl not available soon enough?) On an even further tangential topic, we use Linux as a gaming, multimedia, internet bowsing, instant messaging, word processing, bookkeeping, and music authoring system here, because it works better. Funny thing, MCSE's like telling me that Linux is only able to work as a server. (I will never get over the glee I felt when I saw the expression on an MCSE's face...he came over, and we watched a DVD. After the DVD, the MPlayer screen came up. I closed it, and there was a big flying penguin on the desktop. Of course, he still thinks that Linux can't be used as a multimedia OS.) > Are you sure the user you are trying to use over Samba can write to the > mounted drive? Usually when mounting a vfat partition only the id > mounting it (usually root) can write to it. It might work on the other > systems because of differences in /etc/fstab. Sorry, it doesn't mount on any systems, Windows nor Linux, even when I force-user as root. Mozilla For those who had the same problems I had in Mozilla, did you by any chance install Kopete or the native AIM? There is a stronger correlation between Kopete and the bugs, but AIM is in such a position that it would be more likely to cause Mozilla troubles. I can understand Kopete's binaries being incompatible and therefore crashing (which it doesn't...it runs perfectly), but I couldn't understand it breaking Mozilla which it seems to do. Prelinking I tried again, and it screwed stuff up again. I ran it in Psyche again, and everything slowed down again. However, that's when I do --all --conserve-memory. When I do -av, I have no problems, but likewise there is precisely no change in memory consumption, startup times, program start times, etc., in either Psyche or Shrike.
