UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi guys,

I still have "microsoft windows" eyes so this unix freebsd stuff still looks very alien to me.

Yesterday I managed to install freebsd 5.1 on my dell notebook. And today I got Gnome 2.2 working. I have this problem I can only login to Gnome with my normal user account, and not with the "root" account, not sure why that is. Stuff like "GDM configurator" I cannot open with my normal user account. Maybe anyone knows why this is?

I read a few basics on freebsd and Gnome from the links you guys gave me but i am still not getting a few things. With windows i used to download this app , just double click on setup and it installs. I go to start programs, and there it is hehe.

With GNOME it's completely different. I tried to install GnomeICU (some kind of icq app) but it didn't work. I downloaded the gz file and extracted it in a new folder on my /home/username/downloads. The helpfile says just type install from the command line util or from the root type make install but nothing happens. I am not sure what to do when i extracted these apps. In windows you look for the setup.exe but what is it in unix.

One other thing. I installed Mozilla and it worked . One problem though. I can't find any shortcuts to mozilla. I would like to make a shortcut on my desktop or as a new panel next to the desktop panel on GNOME. I have no idea where to look at. When i open file manager and i enter an url, on the left of the file manager i get to see 2 options, open with mozilla, or open with another util...

Any help appreciated!


Dalma

For security reasons, some display managers forbids root login.

KDM by default seems to allow it, while GDM disallows it.

You may edit the GDM configuration file manually (I don't know the exact path on FreeBSD, should be somewhere inside /etc) and there is an option there which allows you to change to enable root login.

Unix is from the ground up a multi-user OS. Therefore, there is a clear distinction of user and administrator (you have a similar notion in Windows NT+ world, but different implementation). GDM configuration is a system-wide affair. It is not anything you do to your own user account, and therefore you need root privilege to use the GDM configurator, which writes to its configuration file that I mentioned.

I think you can install gnomeicu by

pkg_add -r gnomeicu2

(just type this at the command prompt)

This uses the "packages" app installation method to do all downloading and installing work for you automatically. This is most probably what you want. You can alternaticely use the "ports" system to automatically fetch, compile and install software packages. For more detail on software installation on FreeBSd, see http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...ook/ports.html

If you download tarballs manually, usually you do it on Unix systems by three consecutive commands as root

./configure
make
make install

(that's also what the gnomeicu docs said)

which set up compilation parameters, compile, and install respectively. However, because of the way FreeBSD organizes files it may be possible that extra options needed for ./configure, and so you would get a better chance to succeed using packages or ports instead. If errors occurred in any of these commands, then you are out of luck if you can't manage to figure out the options needed. If successful, this app will then be installed systemwide so every user on the system would have access to the app.

Right click on the desktop and you ought to be able to create a shortcut to mozilla. Try it yourself.