Baslinux mailing list

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On Sat, 8 Dec 2007, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> On Fri, 7 Dec 2007, Sindi wrote:

> For what it's worth, Opera 9.50 does work on BL 3.5 with the upgraded
> libraries (linked to from the BL site under the directions for installing
> Opera).

Good to know.  Let us know if it works from the directory it was unpacked 
into or just after running install.sh.  Opera has a wrapper script in 
opera-9*/ 'Use this if you don't want to install Opera to any special 
location".

> As I suspected though, making BL 3 work for an unpriviledged user looks to
> be alot more complicated than just adding the passwd.tgz program. I
> couldn't get Xvesa to run for the new user, for example. I'd say it's
> going to take alot of reverse engineering to set up BL 3 for the need I
> have in mind. I'm not up for that unless professional help--namely from
> Steven--is on offer. I've seen enough in my experiments today to know that
> I don't want to tackle that task on my own--definitely not on top of what
> I've taken on in volunteering to set up this little lab.

> So, more on BL 2, under which I presume I won't have such problems. Does
> Xvesa work fine for unpriveledged users under BL 2, or should I stick with
> the full fledged X?

BL2 has most of the same problems but there is already a user account set 
up and you don't need passwd.tgz, and xterm does not use ttyp? ptyp?.  I 
switched BL2 over to Xvesa and rxvt and got them working as user.

I found my handwritten notes on this:

Xvesa as user:
chmod +s Xvesa
chmod +rw /dev/ttyp? and /dev/ptyp? - both are needed by rxvt
(Put the above line in rc if they reset themselve son reboot)

To dial as user:
chmod +s eznet (this gives eznet root privileges and lets it use pppd in 
/usr/sbin, not on path for user)

chmod +rw /dev/ttyS* (or LT0) in rc (it resets itself on exit)
(also ttyUSB for pilot-link with USB connection)

/usr/sbin/ppp-on and ppp-off are not on user path, symlink to /usr/bin
ln -s /usr/bin/ppp-on /usr/sbin/ppp-on (same for ppp-off)

Opera and lynx as user:
chmod o+rw /dev/null (used by Opera)
chmod o+w /tmp (used by lynx)

cp -a /root/* /home/user for config files for opera and lynx
In /home  (user being each user?)
chown -R user *
chown -T user .*
chgrp -R users *
chgrp -R users .*
(Or install Opera individually for each user)
(It would be nice if passwd.tgz could somehow do this).

Make sure to include subdirectories

pmail is in /usr/sbin.  Steven suggests using Sylpheed instead, which 
I have not tried as user, or Opera mail for POP mail.  pmail (in 
/usr/sbin, would need to symlink to it from /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin) 
does not work with earthlink, which requires authentication now for 
outgoing mail.  If you will have lots of users you might not be allowed 
email accounts for them all by the ISP so you could use webmail 
(fastmail.fm, yahoo, gmail...)

If people will be printing, use gs directly, not lpr, in both Opera and 
Abiword.  That is also in the archives.

My notes say:
/etc/ppp/options must exist and be -rw-r-r- (not sure why)

splitvt does not work for user except as
term=VT100 splitvt (something about ownership)

To use ssh:
chmod o+w /dev/urandom  or you will get "PRNG is not seeded"
(urandom seeds it)

Steven was not interested in modifying BL permissions to the above (for 
instance /dev/null and /tmp) as defaults.

Please try again and let me know if I missed something.  The Answer Gang 
helped me tremendously getting this to work.  That discussion is online in 
gory detail, much of it about WHY you should be online as user not root. 
I compiled a program to check for rootkits and despite years of running BL 
online as root nothing bad seems to have happened yet.  (busybox was 
detected as a possible rootkit though).

Karolis figured out that ttys? resets its permissions if you do not 
ppp-off before rebooting and needs to be changed in rc each time.

> Thanks,
> James