From kolbe@u.washington.edu Tue Feb 18 22:27:53 2003 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.133]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.12) with ESMTP id h1J6Rqh4023398 for ; Tue, 18 Feb 2003 22:27:52 -0800 Received: from sccrmhc03.attbi.com (sccrmhc03.attbi.com [204.127.202.63]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.12) with ESMTP id h1J6Rgkr032428 for ; Tue, 18 Feb 2003 22:27:50 -0800 Received: from u.washington.edu (12-231-120-21.client.attbi.com[12.231.120.21]) by sccrmhc03.attbi.com (sccrmhc03) with SMTP id <2003021906274700300fjlh8e>; Wed, 19 Feb 2003 06:27:48 +0000 Message-ID: <3E5323E4.7090805@u.washington.edu> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 22:27:48 -0800 From: Kolbe Kegel X-Accept-Language: es, es-es, en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Installfest (was Re: Why can't I su?) References: <3E531EB9.6000504@u.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <3E531EB9.6000504@u.washington.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ok really this is in fact a very important security feature. only certain users are allowed to use su, and that obviously lowers the potential for random users to try to maliciously gain root access. the original poster already said that he got it working simply by adding his user to the "wheel" group. i think you have to be careful when speaking of "linux newbies" in general. i got my first linux system working on some busted ass 486 about 6 years ago (using slackware). i didn't know a damn thing about how any of it was supposed to work, and i kept typing "dir" and "cls" and they didn't do anything, and i was a little bit annoyed. but i bought some huge freakin' book with all of these howtos in it and i followed them and eventually, somehow, i got PPP working with my modem and i think i eventually even got X working. i stopped using linux and tried again with redhat a couple years later and i couldn't get *anything* to work. i'm serious, sometimes my modem would work, sometimes not, nothing worked as expected. so i tried using debian, and i honestly couldn't even get it to install. so i went back to slackware (i don't know of anyone who would say that slackware is the ideal newbie distribution). the point is that any distribution is just as good a newbie distribution as any other, it just depends on what someone wants out of their experience with linux. if someone wants to sock it to redmond and still stay away from the "scary text" (as one of my friends calls it), then gentoo, slackware and debian are all poor choices. i wanted to learn how it worked, and i think i've learned quite a bit, but it's only becuase everything's been so difficult, and i love every minute of it. i still get a big grin across my face every time something prints correctly. Kolbe goodness am i starting a distribution war? i'm not trying to do that.. i just want to point out that the suitability of any particular tool depends on the reason that a person is using a tool. Travis Saling wrote: >> >> >> Okay, so I downloaded and built a gentoo system over the weekend (and >> it DID take the better part of the weekend). I'm pretty happy with >> it, but it's doing a couple of wierd things that I haven't run into >> before. >> >> First of all, /etc is all messed up, but that's not that bad. >> >> My big problem is that 'su -' doesn't work at all. I know that I'm >> putting in the password correctly, but I keep getting rejected. >> >> > > Hmm... IMO this doesn't sound like a distro that's appropriate for > Linux newbies (thinking about the people who would probably want help > installing Linux, NOT about Mr. Juranich!). > .