Have recently installed this, any gurus out there that may be able to answer these, cheers

Does anyone know if there is a way to get rid of the prompt warning that you are a 'privileged user' each time you log on as root?

I have recently updated my monitor and althought it is fine on a Windows box, even after autoconfig on the monitor (which made the screen fit) the aspect ratio looks 'rectangular' with text sort of blotchy text on Fedora.

Is there any way if you restore it to another (larger) hard drive to make use of the extra space?

Also there used to be a Sheffield computer club that met at Club 197 on Western Bank, is it still going? (not Sheflug)

You might be better asking the people that know....
http://www.fedoraforum.org/

The reminder of superuser login is a safety net, to remind you to think about wether you actually need to be root user (at least that's why I leave it ;) ). I can't tell you where to switch it off, but like everything in Linux, I don't doubt it can be done.

The screen thing sounds like the resolution needs tinkering with. I forget where the options are, I'll try to remember to have a look when I get home tonight if no-one has answered by then.

Have a look at using the sudo command. This should allow you to make any changes required without having to login as the real root

The reminder of superuser login is a safety net, to remind you to think about wether you actually need to be root user (at least that's why I leave it ).

It's that immortal computer question isn't it, do you let it nag you 99 times out of a 100 to save you from the one unthinking autopilot keypress.
Having just had to spend time with Windows Vista where Microsoft seem to have turned the nag box into an art form I have decided I shall live dangerously!

It's that immortal computer question isn't it, do you let it nag you 99 times out of a 100 to save you from the one unthinking autopilot keypress.
Having just had to spend time with Windows Vista where Microsoft seem to have turned the nag box into an art form I have decided I shall live dangerously!

Haha! :hihi:

I've not yet had the 'pleasure' of Vista... ;)

Perhaps you should look at the way you are using Fedora... you shouldn't see that popup/warning much as you shouldn't be logging in as root much.

This is fundamental to the reason Linux has a reputation of being more secure... use a standard user all the time, only rarely use the root user.

If you are happy to use the command line, sudo to root on the occasions you need to in a shell/terminal. As another poster said. :thumbsup:

I really would advise you not to log in as root, especially if you're new to *nix - use sudo or su when needed. One mistyped rm command could total your box. Undeleting stuff on *nix isn't straight forward and usually by default there's no yes/no prompt when logged in as root. There's also a million and one other things you could break as root. Sudo and su are there for good reason - I'd advise using a normal user account :)

Will seek further guidance from the uber geeks at Sheffield Linux group tomorrow (if I get get them to stop slagging off Microsoft for 10 minutes :) )

Will seek further guidance from the uber geeks at Sheffield Linux group tomorrow (if I get get them to stop slagging off Microsoft for 10 minutes :) )

A LUG that doesn't slag off M$?! :suspect:
Not going to happen :roll::hihi:

DaFoot has a point. Root can be bad though - I totalled a box the other week when I managed to run 'rm -rfv *' in /etc/ which was more than slightly stupid. Yes it was a pretty important production server............. I thought I was in an applications logs directory :(

Serves me right for thinking administering systems at 2 in the morning is a good idea.

Guys - you need to make it clear that the reasons you don't oermanently run a linux box as root are not limited to "accidental `rm -rf /`s".. the point is that when you run any application, you are running that application as root and therefore that application's code is permitted to do absolutely anything with your operating system.

Do you know how many idiots have been boned by running X-Chat as root and then going out and harassing IRC users?

For a production desktop machine:
DO NOT RUN YOUR PRIMARY LOG ON AS ROOT

If you need a root shell, `su -`. If you need a root X session, go in - do what you need - get out. Otherwise, use sudo.

Oh, by the way, dump Fedora. It's NOT good. Not for servers, not for desktops, not for learning on. Dump it.

Oh, by the way, dump Fedora. It's NOT good. Not for servers, not for desktops, not for learning on. Dump it.
Had a bad experience with Fedora then? :suspect::D

I've been using FC6 on my lappy for a few years with out problem, what is it you don't like about it?

Had a bad experience with Fedora then? :suspect::D

I deal with fedora in a professional capacity all week long. We have mixed signal engineers running Fedora as their primary desktop just because it's binary compatible with RHEL.

I have dealt with it day in, day out for a long time now.

I am not in a position to launch a diatribe against it right now, because I could go on for many hours about it, but suffice it to say it's pseudo-proprietary, badly configured out of the box and stores information in such a ridiculous way that the only sane way to make changes to the OS is to use the GUI tools.

Screw Fedora. Screw Red Hat.

I've been using FC6 on my lappy for a few years with out problem, what is it you don't like about it?

See above.

As for using it without any problems, I could commute to work once a week in a Nisaan Sunny without any problems, it wouldn't mean it was any good, or suitable for anyone else's purposes. People report using Norton Antivirus "without seeing any problems" - it doesn't mean it isn't vile devil spawn.

I'm done now.

i dont think fedora is that bad, but the rest of what alkatraz says is true. its not just about doing something stupid. if you run as program that connects to the internet (xchat, firefox, etc), as root, and it gets hacked, the hacker has root, which means you need to wipe the box & start again from known good backups.

thats why you get the warning, you shouldnt usually log in as root.

having said that, fedora is beta quality software, there are always bugs, it usually takes them until the next version is out to get it fixed. centos is much more reliable.

Well yeah I did miss out that rather large point about being compromised, oops :)

having said that, fedora is beta quality software, there are always bugs


If only the problem was the bugs.. it's bad design, through and through.. Red Hat started bad and has only gotten worse.

I used to use Fedora but found it was too unstable. Its too much of a Red Hat Beta. I swapped to Kubuntu and have not looked back since.

<snip>

suffice it to say it's pseudo-proprietary, badly configured out of the box

<snip>

Screw Fedora. Screw Red Hat.


Just to hammer this point home about Red Hat being a complete arsepain.. here is an e-mail from the BestPractical RT-Users mailing list:

We performed server updates last weekend, including updating Centos 5.0
to 5.1, plus all of the yum updates that go with it. Now, RT is not
working.

We don't see any messages that stand out in our rt.log or in /var/log/.

Has anyone encountered this problem before?

Craig Patterson


I'm going to take a wild guess and say that this might fix it:

(As root)

# perl -MCPAN -e'force install "Scalar::Util"'

Success!

Thanks Jesse, that did the trick.

Thanks to everyone else who sent suggestions as well. Once again, I'm
indebted to the RT list.

Craig Patterson

Jesse, would you mind sharing how you came up with your theory?


James Moseley

RedHat (and therefore CentOS) tends to build perl with weakened
references off. This "breaks" Scalar::Util from RT's requirements/point
of view.

Jeff Voskamp

Well since my creaky drive finally gave up at the weekend, I've kissed goodbye for WinXP, for now at least.

FC8 has installed smoothly. Yum is doing its thing as I type.

I think I'll start a blog of my adventures..... just so I've got something to look back on :)

I am running the 32 bit version on an AMD 64 (it was from a cover disc with no 64 bit version).
Is it worth getting the 64 bit version? (I assume disc access alone would be much faster?)
Anyone know of any issues? Cheers

64 bit linux (except in servers with no GUI) is more hassle than it's worth, especially for a general use machine...

STILL no 64-bit flash plugin, & java can be a pain in the arse...

Got to agree with the Fedora slagging off too I'm afraid. Have been using it in servers for years now but 7 & 8 have both given me grief whereas I'd had nothing but joy before that.

I've since defected to Debian-based for desktop & laptop (Sidux), pretty much the same, just get used to typing in apt-get instead of yum!

...Got to agree with the Fedora slagging off too I'm afraid. Have been using it in servers for years now but 7 & 8 have both given me grief whereas I'd had nothing but joy before that.
Maybe that's why I'm happy with fedora... my lappy is running FC6 rather than 7 or 8.

Just installed 8 on my PC so maybe I'll see if there is that much a negative performance hit.

Maybe that's why I'm happy with fedora... my lappy is running FC6 rather than 7 or 8.

Just installed 8 on my PC so maybe I'll see if there is that much a negative performance hit.

6 was the worst one for me.. couldn't even get a clean install to work properly.

Oh, and the ones I work with daily vary from 3 to 5, and we've tested 7&8

If anyone is interested, I've started a blog to document success and failures of the project...

http://dafoot-adventuresinlinux.blogspot.com/

To put my comments in context, I started dabbling with Redhat 6 I think it was as my first Linux. Tried a few others around the same time but decided I preffered RedHat.

Decided it wasn't up to replacing my Windows installation.

Linux as main dev environment during 2 uni courses (strictly as a user here).

Put FC3 or 4 on laptop as second home machine and to run servers for my PHP/MySQL work. That is currently running FC6.

Two jobs ago it was daily use of redhat (8 or 9 I think)/fedora (early versions) based servers from setup, RAID configs, Apache/tomcat/MySQL/PHP.

Previous job, had a dev box with fedora installed to test my (Java) webapps - admin was my own duty on there.

Current job, no Fedora but Solaris.

I'm far from a Linux support pro, but reasonably confident as a basic user. Hopefully will get more advanced by forcing myself into using it for tasks other than servers.

You will also note that Redhat (later Fedora) are the distros I have spend the vast majority of my Linux time with. So kinda felt like 'better the devil you know' when choosing my desktop distro.

I may yet be persuaded by the guys in the office to go the Ubuntu route!

You will also note that Redhat (later Fedora) are the distros I have spend the vast majority of my Linux time with. So kinda felt like 'better the devil you know' when choosing my desktop distro.

I may yet be persuaded by the guys in the office to go the Ubuntu route!

Sounds like I'm about 6 months ahead of you, exactly the same set of circumstances, I just started on Fedora 2, lots of LAMP.

Trying Ubuntu you may end up the same way as me, after a month with it on my laptop I couldn't help feeling that I was ready for the grown-up's version now. Went briefly up the family tree to Debian, then hopped sideways to Sidux (stable version of the unstable debian version running KDE), & haven't looked back since.

I've looked at xorg.conf in confusion quite a lot, but never back... :hihi: