Catch 22

[KBAegis]

Hi there. I just installed Sarge on my system, and had the common 'root only access' to HDD problem. Also, KDE and Gnome for some reason wouldn't cooperate with root logins, even after the additions of the sudo and gdm pacakges to my filesystem.

Anyway, trying the best I could with my limited knowledge of linux, I found the stupid problem was a direct result of the fstab file in the /ect directory and the way the partitioner works. So, taking matters into my own hands, I changed the write permissions. It looked something like this:

/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1

And I changed it to this:

/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-rw 0 1

First of all, does anyone have any clue why gdm and sudo don't work when attempting to enable root login (I had to do everything from tty1 through the gui via the startx cmd,) and how I can recover my harddrive without reinstalling from scratch?

Or do I have to re-format and reinstall the whole thing because the character was changed to allow rw access? I'm completely locked out of that partion right now, where the root folder is, and I was hoping there were some NTFS utilities or pacakges I could run from recover mode to allow overwriting of a text file w/o permissions on ext3.

While were asking questions, I could use a little help. During the configuration process, X11 asked for my graphic specs. I had my monitor v/h-syncs, but I didn't have my bus address. I've got a Toshiba Satellite A10-S128, and so my bus speed's 333mhz, but I had no clue what the address was. I skipped out of that step with the escape key, and I have no clue where to find that information, nor where to put it when I've found it, though I have found the file where X11 stores the v/h-sync information when it asks for all of that.

Like I said, I'm running XP right now, so Device Manager says "PCI Bus" - (Resources) I/O Range 0000-0CF7 & I/O Range 0D00-FFFF, and six memory range allocations.

So what do I do to fix myself up?

[muha]

to revert to the old fstab you could try editing it by booting a knoppix live cd.
Hope that helps

[antidrugue]

First of all, does anyone have any clue why gdm and sudo don't work when attempting to enable root login (I had to do everything from tty1 through the gui via the startx cmd,) and how I can recover my harddrive without reinstalling from scratch?

Don't know, but I have no idea either why you would want to log as root in a GUI (like Gnome or KDE): very bad idea, never do that.

If you have a problem with your system, try to boot the system in "recovery mode" at the Grub prompt.

Or just boot with a Live CD (Knoppix, Ubuntu Live, etc.), then mount your / partition or /etc. Make the appropriate changes, and boot back in Debian.

While were asking questions, I could use a little help. During the configuration process, X11 asked for my graphic specs. I had my monitor v/h-syncs, but I didn't have my bus address. I've got a Toshiba Satellite A10-S128, and so my bus speed's 333mhz, but I had no clue what the address was. I skipped out of that step with the escape key, and I have no clue where to find that information, nor where to put it when I've found it, though I have found the file where X11 stores the v/h-sync information when it asks for all of that.

Like I said, I'm running XP right now, so Device Manager says "PCI Bus" - (Resources) I/O Range 0000-0CF7 & I/O Range 0D00-FFFF, and six memory range allocations.

So what do I do to fix myself up?

Really, any question that your don't know the answer (during X config), you leave it blank or default.

If you still wants to know the bus address (normally you don't need it, but still it ask for it), just do:

lspci | grep -i vga

which will give you something like that:
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)

In that case, the BusID is
PCI:1:0:0

[KBAegis]

Well, I hate using the console, so the GUI for root is a lot more convienent for me. As for the knoppix tip, it doesn't work. For some reason, the partition is mounted in a way that won't allow knoppix to access its permissions or modify it in any way. Oddly enough, my version of Knoppix has NTFS integration, and it won't let me modify my XP partition either.

Here's the long and short of it: how do I change read/write permissions, because the conventional methods don't seem to be working. I have a 30gb toshiba HDD, an up-to-date BIOS, and a HDD install of sarge. What the hell is going on?

[antidrugue]

Well, I hate using the console, so the GUI for root is a lot more convienent for me.

I don't see any situation where login in as root is useful/appropriate for the whole Gnome/KDE session.

Just use "gksu" in Gnome to launch an application with root privileges.

As for the knoppix tip, it doesn't work. For some reason, the partition is mounted in a way that won't allow knoppix to access its permissions or modify it in any way. Oddly enough, my version of Knoppix has NTFS integration, and it won't let me modify my XP partition either.

While in Knoppix, you can mount any partition (linux compatible partitions) like that (for example):

cd /mnt
mkdir temp
su
mount -t ext3 /dev/hda3 /mnt/temp

You can change permission (while logged as root -- with "su"), with "chmod".

You can then modify any, or copy it.

I can certainly understand you don't like the command line. It can be useful to have a little basic knowlegde though.

[KBAegis]

Well, thanks antidrugue, but I'm afraid that that wasn't very helpful. It would seem as if we're speaking two completely different languages, as I have no clue how to use the chmod cmd. The help file didn't tell me much, either, and I couldn't create a tempfile for the manual.

What I did try was logging on in recovery mode. I used nano to try and modify fstab, but it said that it wasn't possible because it was a read-only filesystem. Thus the catch 22.

I guess I've just decided to re-format and re-install. Unfortunately, this takes approximately 1 hour, and I'm using the online distro for Sarge, so it'll also waste alot of ftp.debian.org's bandwidth. I just hope the next distro of Debian is easier to use.

[antidrugue]

What I did try was logging on in recovery mode. I used nano to try and modify fstab, but it said that it wasn't possible because it was a read-only filesystem. Thus the catch 22.

Ok, i get it.

I've been in a situation like that before, and I assure you that you can mount partition with Knoppix or Ubuntu Live (with mount).

But, then again, if you had enough, you can reinstall.

[blueskip]

If you can help I also need to know how to login as root. I need to know how to make that change from the GUI.