Baslinux mailing list

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On Mon, 17 Mar 2008, Sindi wrote:

> Are you saying that simply HAVING chgrp on the computer fixed your 
> problem, or you used it to change permissions of pty? and tty? so rxvt 
> would work?

I'm saying that simply having the chgrp binary on the system caused it all 
to work. I didn't need to change permissions on anything. rxvt works as 
user when I issue 

---------------
su user -c rvxt
---------------

But, as you may understand, I'm logged into the system as root. So 
essentailly everything is running as a process started by root (e.g., 
xvesa) except those things I cause to be started by user. That means 
mainly things in the jwm menu: yes, I'm using jwm and not going to the 
console. I offer it as an alternate way of configuring the BL3 machines 
you've been setting up for people on the assumption that most of them will 
be spending all their time in BL3's graphical environment.

So, I had no need to change permissions on any device. From what I gather 
about the way you've been setting up these machines, it may be far simpler 
to do what I've done: add the passwd.tgz package, create your user, add 
the chgrp binary from Slack4 (or some other would likely work just as 
well), then edit all the jwm menu items to su to user when clicked so that 
they run under the unpriviledged account. So far as I can see, the only 
thing you'd want to leave as started by root would be the dialer. Setting 
up the machines that way would save you the problem of changing 
permissions on all those devices. Does it make sense?

Then, if the folks ever needed help from you, you could simply sit in 
front of their PC and hit ctrl-alt-F2 and have a root console for system 
admin purposes.

Anyway, let me know if you'd like any further clarifications.

James

PS You'd probably want to remove some or all the items from jwm's "edit 
settings" submenu so your users could muck up important config files.