Managing Backtrack, or any Linux distro for that matter

[ashtar5]

Doh. Alright, thanks.

I have some questions about users and groups. What's the best / most secure way of setting up your users under BT linux? So far, I've added a user with adduser and logged in successfully. The kde menu is totally different though, so that would be my first question: How do I get my non root user account's kde desktop to be the same as root's? Second question... Once logged in as a non root user, I am unable to run commands as root using sudo; ie sudo shutdown --now . I get prompted for a password, I enter my root pw, but it's not accepted. What am I doing wrong? Third, fourth and fifth questions: When examining the passwd and group files in /etc, there are all sorts of entries I don't understand. For example, what are the operator and nobody users used for? To which group should I be assigned? I am in the group users, what would be a scenario in which I would need to create a user under the group ftp, nogroup, pop, etc?

[pureh@te]

Originally Posted by ashtar5

Doh. Alright, thanks.

I have some questions about users and groups. What's the best / most secure way of setting up your users under BT linux? So far, I've added a user with adduser and logged in successfully. The kde menu is totally different though, so that would be my first question: How do I get my non root user account's kde desktop to be the same as root's? Second question... Once logged in as a non root user, I am unable to run commands as root using sudo; ie sudo shutdown --now . I get prompted for a password, I enter my root pw, but it's not accepted. What am I doing wrong? Third, fourth and fifth questions: When examining the passwd and group files in /etc, there are all sorts of entries I don't understand. For example, what are the operator and nobody users used for? To which group should I be assigned? I am in the group users, what would be a scenario in which I would need to create a user under the group ftp, nogroup, pop, etc?

1. I don't know the exact answer but I know it has been asked and answered on the forums a few times before so a little searching will probably yield the answer. If it were me I would try to figure out where in the "root" directory there was a KDE menu .config and the import that into /home/(your directory). I'm not sure if its that easy with kde but I bet it is.

2. This has to do with what groups your user belongs to. In order to run commands as root your user must be part of the wheel group. try this instead...
bt~# su -
password:
that should switch you to root.

3. Groups and group permissions are basic linux. You should probably ask these questions in a more basic linux forum.

[archangel.amael]

A good bit of reading on the basic linux file structures and how linux operates would be some good bit of reading to do my man! This will serve you better later one.

[camelel]

Hello!
I've got a running BT3 with compiz, but there's a command i must run in order to have windows title bars (minimize,maximize buttons etc...) so I've created a file called startnvidia.sh:
#!/bin/bash
exec /usr/bin/X11/nvidia-xconfig -d 24
then i did ln -s startnvidia.sh ~/.kde/Autostart/

but when i log into X after restart it's still not running the script.
although i've noticed that when i'm ending kde's session just before i get the login request i see that the script has been executed - when i ended the session rather than started it.
after running the command manually compiz works smoothly.

got any idea about it?

thanks!