Debian and Mac OS X - Page 9

tjj · 01-29-2003, 06:02 PM

Yeah, well, I added a user (me) as myusername.
Then I added an entry in the sudoers like:
myusername and copied what I saw for root.
So I log in as mysername, $who gives me 'myusername', so I guess that's me when it says so

. I can run sudo command with myusername's password, e.g. dselect or dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 (thanks!) with sudo but not without. So I guess I should be okay securitywise in that aspect at least.

Glanz · 01-29-2003, 06:32 PM

Yep! sssssOOOOOOKKKKKK!

thatch · 01-30-2003, 01:03 AM

Hey guys, lots of good things happening here lately. Great to hear that tjj discovered the key to getting the LCD screen going on the powerbooks. Thanks, tjj, I was thinking of trying that driver too. But there are quite a few to choose from and the powerbook manuals and tech info aren't much help. BTW, we have 1MB of vram on the powerbook 3400 series. Anyway, I have gdm launching when I boot up and log in.

There's certainly a lot to learn now. One setting I would really like to change is the trackpad. Anybody know if that can be done? I don't want it doing tap-clicking at all.

I don't have sudo on my rig. I wish I did. There are times I must be root to do things, like dpgk for one, and I'm used to sudo and I'd also really much prefer zsh to bash for my shell. So, I'd like to implement that too.

But I don't yet know where to see a list of available packages in stable to know if zsh is there or whatever. I know it's with dpkg, but I never used that much with fink, so I have to read up on that too.

And as for apt; in fink that was a no brainer. Here it seems that there's some configuration to get apt going. I ran into a problem with the setup on apt Howto. Specifically, where do you add the source line, 'deb file:/root debs/', in the apt locally setup? To the override file or what?

There's so much to do here although it's fun learning a new system. I'll have to refer back to this thread for info since there's so much I haven't gotten to yet, like the modules and run levels and ... it goes on and on.

And I'm wondering what gdm is, really? It seems to be a desktop environment that may be including things from gnome and kde and maybe even sawfish? I've never really used anything but windowmaker because it always satisfied my needs and I felt I didn't have time to experiment with other window managers. I know everybody seemed to like oroborus because it was supposedly more like the OS X aqua interface.

Hopefully I'll be able to find some more time here tomorrow to experiment some more.

best,
thatch

tjj · 01-30-2003, 03:05 AM

thatch,
good to hear that you have it working.
I got sudo during my second(!) install as I too missed it. Yuo can install it using dselect (as root), and if I remember correctly it's in the optional adm. section.
Did you have to specify the 1Mb vram during the set-up? Or did it auto-detect? I specified the amount to 8000 kb during one of my innings with dpkg-reeconfigure xserver-xfree86. But that was using the vga driver. When I changed the driver to fbdev I left it at 8000kb, so I don't know if that's appropriate. My mouse/track pad sure needs configuring as well as the keyboard (can't find the pipe bar '|' among other special char. with my present danish layout, that's annoying).
I have only used apt with either http or cd-rom, I did manage to have a look at the config file, though, I forget where. I'm sure Glanz will point you in the right direction when he's finished feeding the cat.
I'm afraid that I have so much to learn, that there's no way around the Fine Manuals for me. So it will be small steps at a time.

thatch · 01-30-2003, 03:23 AM

tjj, yes, I don't know how I would have missed sudo. Were you given an option to install it during the base installation? Do you think I could install it with apt?

I didn't have to select any video ram during the setup as the installer said it would be okay to leave it blank. But I was trying some things to help it along and I knew that the powerbook had only 1 MB so I entered it in as 1024k which I believe is the same value.

I've used apt in fink many times but only once, so far, in debian. I used the netselect package which was suggested from the apt Howto manual, 'apt-get install netselect' and it worked just like in fink, no problems. But I would like to see a list, like from fink with a 'fink list' command, rather than having to scan through thousands of packages in dselect.

Yes, it will be small steps the whole way through. In the dselect manual, one part says to spend about an hour familiarizing yourself to the whole thing before even trying to use the program.

tjj · 01-30-2003, 03:35 AM

Quote:


	Originally posted by thatch tjj, yes, I don't know how I would have missed sudo. Were you given an option to install it during the base installation? Do you think I could install it with apt?

No, after taskels or whatever, I was asked if I wanted to finetune the system with dselect. I accepted and browsed through the rather long list as I knew I wanted sudo. I agree it is tedious. There must be an easier way [to be discovered].
I suspect that apt-get install sudo or something to that effect

will do the trick, but my experience with this is next to nothing.
Heck, why don't you give it a try; now that we know how to reinstall if it should break.

thatch · 01-30-2003, 04:06 AM

I've now installed sudo with apt, no problem. But now I'm reading the man info on visudo but still don't know, as of yet anyway, how to use visudo to enter me as the sudoer. Plus, I have no experience with vi. I've always used pico and nano . I think nano is my editor of choice. I never felt the need to learn a complicated file editor like vi, vim or emacs.

Okay, I got it now. Had to enter myself as my username which is also my groupname, unlike OS X where I am the admin.

I'm off to bed now. Back tomorrow.

tjj · 01-30-2003, 04:25 AM

I have gotten used to vi for my very small needs. So I just went: vi /etc/sudoers ( as root)
The second line is what I added to my sudoers file:

Code:

root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
myusername  ALL=(ALL) ALL

There's more to be read in one the manuals that Glanz pointed to in an earlier post.
It may not be allowed with any editor, according to the man visudo pages. Maybe a change of the default editor is necessary. Perhaps the file could be edited from the shell if you entered the installer again?

thatch · 01-30-2003, 04:28 AM

Thanks, I got it with visudo. Seemed just like nano to me. Maybe it actually was. See my edit to my previous post.

Nitey Nite!

Glanz · 01-30-2003, 07:00 AM

First of all, here are some lists of lists so you know what you are in for.
http://www.debian.org/mirror/list is the list of all Debian mirror sites.

Here are the binary ppc package lists from the US main Deb site
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dist...inary-powerpc/

When you install Debian, an apt configuration file gets created, and then used to install packages. If you want to make changes to the configuration there are two ways to do it; one is to use the "apt-setup" command, and the other is by manual editing of the "/etc/apt/sources.list".

Using "apt-setup" will allow you to make all the changes you were allowed to make during the first installation. It is done via a text-based display.
CAUTION::::
REMEMBER: When editing the source file, NEVER add CD sources by hand. Each CD has an ID label, which gets recorded in the configuration file. Therefore, you may remove CD sources, but you cannot add them.

Gnome-apt

A graphical interface for dselect is Gnome-apt which provides a graphical front end to the package management system. It is just like Fink Commander. To use either dselect or gnome-apt, you must be root.

gnome-apt will at least give you a graphical interface with which to browse the packages.

Post Scriptum: gnome-apt used to be glitchy, but it's better now. My cat Schroedinger likes it.

Glanz · 01-30-2003, 11:48 AM

If you are interested, here's a screenshot of my Debian system on my iBook. I am running Windowmaker together with the Gnome Panel and the Xfce menu system. I normally do not run all these menu systems simultaneously, but I just wanted to show you what is possible. The background was modified by me via The GIMP. The original swirl was baby blue and the background was plain baby koolaid blue. I hate all this "blueness" in OS X and in much artwork for Linux. I like graphite and grey scales so I "grey-scaled" the image and metallized the backdrop.

http://glanz.johncfish.com/images/menus.jpg

tjj · 01-30-2003, 04:52 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by Glanz http://glanz.johncfish.com/images/menus.jpg

Eech, I guess it's a good thing that everything is configurable; there's something for everyone's taste

. Thanks for sharing it, anyway.
I like the ashtray in the bottom panel, though.
I managed to remove my bottom panel, because somehow I got three fishes and couldn't get rid of them (I have no cat). So I removed the default panel, and now I would like it back. But I can't seem to find anything about it in the manuals. Must be looking in the wrong places.

Glanz · 01-30-2003, 05:03 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by tjj Must be looking in the wrong places.

If you mean the Gnome panel, it toggles. In other words, if you "shut it off" accidently or otherwise while using Gnome, It may not come back all by itself when you start up Gnome again. So all you have to do is to type "panel" in a terminal, a "run" gui window, or add "panel" to any menu system. Once you restart it though, it should start with Gnome the next time. However, if you have Gnome installed, you can run "panel" from any Window Manager or desktop environment. If you hit the logout button in the panel while in another than Gnome, it won't log you out of the entire session; it will just close the panel.

I bet you're the kind of guy who likes those sickening baby-blues, candy oranges, etc. we see in the aqua interface.... YuK!!!! TriX are for Kids, If you don't believe me, ask the Wabbit!

thatch · 01-30-2003, 05:08 PM

Glanz, thanks for posting more info for us. I knew about the mirror sites but didn't have the ftp site for the packages. That was helpful. I also installed gnome-apt and I can see that it will be helpful to look at what packages are available. But I'd probably just use apt to install anything rather than gnome-apt. After all, it is only alpha and they warn you that it could hose your system.

Your screen shot is certainly more focused than what resolution I'm getting on the powerbook where the icons are a bit on the fuzzy side. It could just be the difference between a new world mac and our old world ones.

Is there any sleep for the screen and hard drive available? I thought I saw a menu for screen saver but I can't seem to find it now..., will keep looking though.

I tried installing again on the PM 7500 with the hard disk install method but I have got a problem getting the right modules configured for it, I think. It's kind of the process of elimination because the PM docs aren't very informative. I'd like it to run Debian because it's much faster than the powerbook and has a lot more vram too.

Glanz · 01-30-2003, 05:22 PM

If you're on gpm, you will have the menus for that in the Gnome control center. If you are on kdm, you use the KDE control center, however, it seems to me that KDE is always in an "alpha" state. They never take the time to correct old errors before inventing new ones via dependencies. It eats CPU, so when you are in "configuration interfaces", it may have a tendency to freeze. Make sure you have "xkill" handy. One of the reasons that KDE always puts xkill in their menu system is because users of KDE need it a lot, even on fast systems. In other words., I do not like KDE and never will. If you use xdm, most everything will have to be done the hard way, unless you have installed some of the unstable x-gui interfaces for system configuration. Beware of those.

As far as the display goes..., it took me a little time to get it to display 1024 x 768, insteas of the lower cartoon resolution. I did that by direct editing.

Glanz · 01-30-2003, 05:25 PM

OH yes.... gnome-apt is dangerous in that it does not tolerate mistakes. One user mistake can trash a system. I use it because I tweaked it into operability over the years. But you are right. It is handy as a virtual filesystem that indicates what one has, what is available and what the dependencies might be.

thatch · 01-30-2003, 05:28 PM

How do you remove icons from the taskbar or dock or whatever it's called?

Glanz · 01-30-2003, 05:43 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by thatch How do you remove icons from the taskbar or dock or whatever it's called?

You mean in Gnome????? Do the equivalent of a right click on the icon and select "Remove from panel"......

Glanz · 01-30-2003, 05:45 PM

Watch for it Thomas; the next screenshot will be for you. I am sure you'll like it.

Glanz · 01-30-2003, 05:49 PM

To add launchers from the gnome menu to the panel, right-click on the panel and follow the trail from "panel" to "add to panel" to "Launcher from panel" >>>> ETC Don't forget that you can "fold up" the panel via the arrows at each end. If you have no arrows, right-click on the panel and choose properties, global properties , etc to adjust the folding, the transparency or colors, whether or not you want it to stay above windows or not, etc....

01-29-2003, 06:02 PM	#161
tjj Major Leaguer Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Posts: 271	Yeah, well, I added a user (me) as myusername. Then I added an entry in the sudoers like: myusername and copied what I saw for root. So I log in as mysername, $who gives me 'myusername', so I guess that's me when it says so . I can run sudo command with myusername's password, e.g. dselect or dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 (thanks!) with sudo but not without. So I guess I should be okay securitywise in that aspect at least. __________________ -- Thomas 10.4.11 on Pismo 500 MHz/1GB 10.5.6 on iMac intel 2.16 GHz core duo/2GB

01-30-2003, 03:05 AM	#164
tjj Major Leaguer Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Posts: 271	thatch, good to hear that you have it working. I got sudo during my second(!) install as I too missed it. Yuo can install it using dselect (as root), and if I remember correctly it's in the optional adm. section. Did you have to specify the 1Mb vram during the set-up? Or did it auto-detect? I specified the amount to 8000 kb during one of my innings with dpkg-reeconfigure xserver-xfree86. But that was using the vga driver. When I changed the driver to fbdev I left it at 8000kb, so I don't know if that's appropriate. My mouse/track pad sure needs configuring as well as the keyboard (can't find the pipe bar '\|' among other special char. with my present danish layout, that's annoying). I have only used apt with either http or cd-rom, I did manage to have a look at the config file, though, I forget where. I'm sure Glanz will point you in the right direction when he's finished feeding the cat. I'm afraid that I have so much to learn, that there's no way around the Fine Manuals for me. So it will be small steps at a time. __________________ -- Thomas 10.4.11 on Pismo 500 MHz/1GB 10.5.6 on iMac intel 2.16 GHz core duo/2GB

01-30-2003, 04:06 AM	#167
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	I've now installed sudo with apt, no problem. But now I'm reading the man info on visudo but still don't know, as of yet anyway, how to use visudo to enter me as the sudoer. Plus, I have no experience with vi. I've always used pico and nano . I think nano is my editor of choice. I never felt the need to learn a complicated file editor like vi, vim or emacs. Okay, I got it now. Had to enter myself as my username which is also my groupname, unlike OS X where I am the admin. I'm off to bed now. Back tomorrow. Last edited by thatch; 01-30-2003 at 04:25 AM.

01-30-2003, 04:25 AM	#168
tjj Major Leaguer Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Posts: 271	I have gotten used to vi for my very small needs. So I just went: vi /etc/sudoers ( as root) The second line is what I added to my sudoers file: Code: root ALL=(ALL) ALL myusername ALL=(ALL) ALL There's more to be read in one the manuals that Glanz pointed to in an earlier post. It may not be allowed with any editor, according to the man visudo pages. Maybe a change of the default editor is necessary. Perhaps the file could be edited from the shell if you entered the installer again? __________________ -- Thomas 10.4.11 on Pismo 500 MHz/1GB 10.5.6 on iMac intel 2.16 GHz core duo/2GB

01-30-2003, 07:00 AM	#170
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	First of all, here are some lists of lists so you know what you are in for. http://www.debian.org/mirror/list is the list of all Debian mirror sites. Here are the binary ppc package lists from the US main Deb site http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dist...inary-powerpc/ When you install Debian, an apt configuration file gets created, and then used to install packages. If you want to make changes to the configuration there are two ways to do it; one is to use the "apt-setup" command, and the other is by manual editing of the "/etc/apt/sources.list". Using "apt-setup" will allow you to make all the changes you were allowed to make during the first installation. It is done via a text-based display. CAUTION:::: REMEMBER: When editing the source file, NEVER add CD sources by hand. Each CD has an ID label, which gets recorded in the configuration file. Therefore, you may remove CD sources, but you cannot add them. Gnome-apt A graphical interface for dselect is Gnome-apt which provides a graphical front end to the package management system. It is just like Fink Commander. To use either dselect or gnome-apt, you must be root. gnome-apt will at least give you a graphical interface with which to browse the packages. Post Scriptum: gnome-apt used to be glitchy, but it's better now. My cat Schroedinger likes it. Last edited by Glanz; 01-30-2003 at 07:47 AM.

01-29-2003, 06:32 PM	#162
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	Yep! sssssOOOOOOKKKKKK!

01-30-2003, 01:03 AM	#163
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	Hey guys, lots of good things happening here lately. Great to hear that tjj discovered the key to getting the LCD screen going on the powerbooks. Thanks, tjj, I was thinking of trying that driver too. But there are quite a few to choose from and the powerbook manuals and tech info aren't much help. BTW, we have 1MB of vram on the powerbook 3400 series. Anyway, I have gdm launching when I boot up and log in. There's certainly a lot to learn now. One setting I would really like to change is the trackpad. Anybody know if that can be done? I don't want it doing tap-clicking at all. I don't have sudo on my rig. I wish I did. There are times I must be root to do things, like dpgk for one, and I'm used to sudo and I'd also really much prefer zsh to bash for my shell. So, I'd like to implement that too. But I don't yet know where to see a list of available packages in stable to know if zsh is there or whatever. I know it's with dpkg, but I never used that much with fink, so I have to read up on that too. And as for apt; in fink that was a no brainer. Here it seems that there's some configuration to get apt going. I ran into a problem with the setup on apt Howto. Specifically, where do you add the source line, 'deb file:/root debs/', in the apt locally setup? To the override file or what? There's so much to do here although it's fun learning a new system. I'll have to refer back to this thread for info since there's so much I haven't gotten to yet, like the modules and run levels and ... it goes on and on. And I'm wondering what gdm is, really? It seems to be a desktop environment that may be including things from gnome and kde and maybe even sawfish? I've never really used anything but windowmaker because it always satisfied my needs and I felt I didn't have time to experiment with other window managers. I know everybody seemed to like oroborus because it was supposedly more like the OS X aqua interface. Hopefully I'll be able to find some more time here tomorrow to experiment some more. best, thatch

01-30-2003, 03:23 AM	#165
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	tjj, yes, I don't know how I would have missed sudo. Were you given an option to install it during the base installation? Do you think I could install it with apt? I didn't have to select any video ram during the setup as the installer said it would be okay to leave it blank. But I was trying some things to help it along and I knew that the powerbook had only 1 MB so I entered it in as 1024k which I believe is the same value. I've used apt in fink many times but only once, so far, in debian. I used the netselect package which was suggested from the apt Howto manual, 'apt-get install netselect' and it worked just like in fink, no problems. But I would like to see a list, like from fink with a 'fink list' command, rather than having to scan through thousands of packages in dselect. Yes, it will be small steps the whole way through. In the dselect manual, one part says to spend about an hour familiarizing yourself to the whole thing before even trying to use the program.

01-30-2003, 04:28 AM	#169
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	Thanks, I got it with visudo. Seemed just like nano to me. Maybe it actually was. See my edit to my previous post. Nitey Nite!

01-30-2003, 11:48 AM	#171
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	here's a screenshot If you are interested, here's a screenshot of my Debian system on my iBook. I am running Windowmaker together with the Gnome Panel and the Xfce menu system. I normally do not run all these menu systems simultaneously, but I just wanted to show you what is possible. The background was modified by me via The GIMP. The original swirl was baby blue and the background was plain baby koolaid blue. I hate all this "blueness" in OS X and in much artwork for Linux. I like graphite and grey scales so I "grey-scaled" the image and metallized the backdrop. http://glanz.johncfish.com/images/menus.jpg Last edited by Glanz; 01-30-2003 at 11:52 AM.

01-30-2003, 05:08 PM	#174
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	Glanz, thanks for posting more info for us. I knew about the mirror sites but didn't have the ftp site for the packages. That was helpful. I also installed gnome-apt and I can see that it will be helpful to look at what packages are available. But I'd probably just use apt to install anything rather than gnome-apt. After all, it is only alpha and they warn you that it could hose your system. Your screen shot is certainly more focused than what resolution I'm getting on the powerbook where the icons are a bit on the fuzzy side. It could just be the difference between a new world mac and our old world ones. Is there any sleep for the screen and hard drive available? I thought I saw a menu for screen saver but I can't seem to find it now..., will keep looking though. I tried installing again on the PM 7500 with the hard disk install method but I have got a problem getting the right modules configured for it, I think. It's kind of the process of elimination because the PM docs aren't very informative. I'd like it to run Debian because it's much faster than the powerbook and has a lot more vram too.

01-30-2003, 05:22 PM	#175
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	If you're on gpm, you will have the menus for that in the Gnome control center. If you are on kdm, you use the KDE control center, however, it seems to me that KDE is always in an "alpha" state. They never take the time to correct old errors before inventing new ones via dependencies. It eats CPU, so when you are in "configuration interfaces", it may have a tendency to freeze. Make sure you have "xkill" handy. One of the reasons that KDE always puts xkill in their menu system is because users of KDE need it a lot, even on fast systems. In other words., I do not like KDE and never will. If you use xdm, most everything will have to be done the hard way, unless you have installed some of the unstable x-gui interfaces for system configuration. Beware of those. As far as the display goes..., it took me a little time to get it to display 1024 x 768, insteas of the lower cartoon resolution. I did that by direct editing. Last edited by Glanz; 01-30-2003 at 08:00 PM.

01-30-2003, 05:25 PM	#176
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	OH yes.... gnome-apt is dangerous in that it does not tolerate mistakes. One user mistake can trash a system. I use it because I tweaked it into operability over the years. But you are right. It is handy as a virtual filesystem that indicates what one has, what is available and what the dependencies might be.

01-30-2003, 05:28 PM	#177
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	How do you remove icons from the taskbar or dock or whatever it's called?

01-30-2003, 05:45 PM	#179
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	Watch out Tjj Watch for it Thomas; the next screenshot will be for you. I am sure you'll like it.

01-30-2003, 05:49 PM	#180
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	To add to the panel To add launchers from the gnome menu to the panel, right-click on the panel and follow the trail from "panel" to "add to panel" to "Launcher from panel" >>>> ETC Don't forget that you can "fold up" the panel via the arrows at each end. If you have no arrows, right-click on the panel and choose properties, global properties , etc to adjust the folding, the transparency or colors, whether or not you want it to stay above windows or not, etc.... Last edited by Glanz; 01-30-2003 at 05:52 PM.