RVDowning

Thanks for the suggestion. I used kdesu since I'm using kde.

Well, I know how to kill a process. I was just questioning what seemed to be different behaviour in Gnome System Monitor.

I installed the newer kernel 2.6.12.14mdk this morning, and all works well. I'm just not sure about how to go about removing the old kernel kernel 2.6.12.12mdk. Do I just do a urpme on it (as well as modifying the grub menu)? If it is urpme, what exact filename to I use?

Well, I tried to do a urpmi --auto-select --auto and it totally hosed my system. Had to do with the nvidia card. I couldn't get back into the graphical user interface I had to go to a backup, so my password problem is fixed. Now, if I can just figure out why I've lost all sound. Sigh.........

Since I am the only user of this system at home, I have it auto login my own account, and I come right up into KDE. Not much of any way for me to screw it up. Also, I turn my system off at night. It is in my bedroom and its fans just make too much noise. I boot it up at first use every morning, and turn if off at end of last use every night. Only thing I can think of -- I was in and out of MCC several times yesterday. It gives you a prompt as to whether it should remember the root password. At one point I said "Yes." I wonder if that has something to do with it. In the past, that would just apply to MCC, nothing else, and was only operative until I logged out. Also, I have a firewall in my dsl modem. Only have ports open for ssh and vnc. And of course, I have "PermitRootLogin no" in sshd_config. For the time being I've taken sshd down. Only have two user defined users. Myself and my buddy. I can su to root or his id and don't get asked for a password. If I su to his id and then try to su from his id to my id, it does ask for a password. Seems it is just my id that is affected. By the way, this is Mandriva 2006. Any suggestons appreciated.

Booted up my machine this morning and went into MCC and I noticed it didn't ask for a root password. I brought up a shell konsole and did an su and it didn't ask me for a password -- it just gave me root access. It seems that somehow my root password has gone away. How can this be??? I just reset roots password, by doing su and executing the passwd command, but it still doesn't ask me for a password when I go to do something privileged. I've seen so many script kiddies tryng to get into my system using ssh that right now I'm scared to death. How do I get my security back?

Having a problem in Mandriva 2006 terminating a process in Gnome System Monitor for those processes that require root privileges to kill or stop. It seems to me that in LE2005 it used to popup a box asking for root's password, and then would allow the process to be killed or stopped. In 2006 I don't get that popup box for the password. Any ideas?

Well, I had found out that he had xinetd running and sshd running. So, I asked him to kill xinetd and sshd and then restart sshd. That was before the timeout I indicated. I don't know whether a reboot was necessary or not, but we didn't do it at the time.

That last message was misleading. That debug output was from my trying to access his machine. If I try to access my machine using localhost (or ip address) I just get a "Connection Refused." That however, is less important than my accessing his.

Well, he can how ssh into my machine, but I can't ssh to localhost. I get the following when using verbose mode: [rvd@localhost ~]$ ssh -vvv mike OpenSSH_4.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.7g 11 Apr 2005 debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config debug1: Applying options for * debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0 debug1: Connecting to mike [66.156.109.99] port 22. debug1: connect to address 66.156.109.99 port 22: Connection timed out ssh: connect to host mike port 22: Connection timed out Any further ideas?

I think your solution is right as regards his coming into my machine, which just seems to be a passwored problem. We'll wipe out that /home/<username>/.ssh/known_hosts file and try again this evening. However, I still have another problem when going from my machine to his. I'm getting a connection refused message. However, I'm getting the same connection refused message when doing ssh myid@localhost. So, there seems to be something else going on here. I was about to deinstall my sshd stuff, wipe out all associated files I could find, and then try again with a fresh installation.

Well, both systems were istalled with "Standard" security settings. We each went into our modem firewall and opened up port 22. We had this working before we reinstalled 2006 on his system (which somehow got clobbered doing an update with urpmi), and while I was still running LE2005. I just did a fresh install of 2006, keeping just my home directory. It wasn't with the tight security. We just each entered a password when we connected to the other system via ssh. I checked out the article, but before I started using any of the secure key methodologies, I just wanted to get the basic ssh connectivity established (to reduce the number of unknowns I am dealing with.)

My buddy and I used to quite happily ssh into each other's systems. He was on 2006 and I was on LE2005. However, I just did a clean install of Mandriva 2006 (and did full updates) and now it no longer works. When he attempts to log into my machine, his password no longer works (permission denied). I can't connect to his machine at all (I just time out as though his machine wasn't there.), even though I think everything is set up correctly on both ends. One thing different I notice on my machine is ssh-agent running. I don't know what starts it. It seems to come up at boot time. I didn't intentionally do anything to initiate any key authentication. I terminated the ssh-agent and see no difference. However, when he attempts to log into my machine, I see two services fire up: sshd: root [net] and sshd: root [priv] (Also, I am unable to ssh into localhost as a test.) Any ideas?

Well, just to close this out, we did a fresh reinstall, and all is well. We also got the backup working using mondo/mindi. Don't know if and when we'll be brave enough to try an update again. Because of the problems we encountered I tend to think that one should modify the system to boot into a consol instead of kdm before doing an update. It might be easier to fix stuff that way, if it breaks.

Agreed, with regard to upgrading. I wouldn't consider doing an upgrade using urpmi. I was just trying to do an update of his existing 2006 system. I haven't been able to try your last suggestion. He was booted into the Dark Side last night to do some actual work. Can't keep him in Linux until he can find an MSAccess replacement that allows subqueries. (Kexi is closest but doesn't allow the latter.) Trying to use mysql for these purposes is like using an h-bomb to kill a mosquito.

I'll have to try this later after work. You say that "The best upgrades are done via the CD/DVD media, I've found some of my upgrades using urpmi to be OK, but not the greatest." However on your "My Mandriva Tips" page you say "If you've already downloaded updates for your system, the only ones you'll need are main, contrib, jpackage, plf-free and plf-nonfree. If you've not already downloaded updates, then I would advise doing this first, and then coming back to this." So, it seems you do think that one should do the updates, unless I'm missing something here.

Well, actually I did stay on LE2005 because I couldn't get xinerama working with my Matrox G400 video card. But I was trying to convert my friend to Linux, and he had no prior Linux system, and was only using a single screen. He did purchase a new nvidia video card after his original installation, and it was configured without any problem. Problems only started with urpmi -- auto --auto-select. However, changing nvidia to nv in the Devices section of xorg.conf fixed the video issue. But the remaining issue is his inability to boot into a working logon screen, or even better (from his perspective) to boot directly into kde. In addition, when he does ctrl/alt F1 and goes through the process to log on and does a startx his icons appear as little black square. We were hosed by the urpmi. In some fashion it damaged kde. and the logon process. I had never had any such issues with my LE2005 when doing the same urpmi statements.

Your succinct answers such as using "nano" may be good for those who know what you are talking about. I did a man on nano and there was no such item. We will do a full reinstall, including his home directory. The only question at the moment is whether we'll bother with 2006 which has many known problems, or revert to LE2005 which seems to be much more stable. Some of us would like to use the system, and not spend all of our time "fixing" it.

Well, my friend followed these steps after booting and getting the login prompts that seem to be non functional: 1. Ctrl+Alt+F1 2. Login as userid/pwd 3. keyed "su" there was no prompt for pw 4. keyed "init 3" 5. Pressed "Enter" key 6. login userid/pwd 7. startx Things seem to come up mostly ok. However, icons appear as black rectangles with the correct text underneath. Now, how to get him back so that he just boots either into a login prompt that works, or to come straight into kde.

Well, I added a user and password via ssh. When he boots into linux he sees that username. He selects kde from the dropdown menu on that login screen, keys in the username and password, hits enter, and it just loops back around to the login screen. He was able to login as root on another consol, but there was not much for him to do there, since I had already added a user for him. Reinstalling from scratch is beginning to seem the most reasonable option. In fact, I wonder if the home directories can be retained, because of the hidden directories/files related to the window manager.

I don't believe there is an option to login in as root on that screen. It just shows existing users.

Since it was asked, video card is as follows: E-GeForce MX4000 DDR 128MB nVidia Chipset

In addition to my previous post I should say that he had usually booted straight into kde with his own userid/pwd. Now, none of the userid/pwd combinations seem to be valid.

Well, a response on another forum almost addressed the issue: "There is no need to reinstall. It is quite easy to get the graphics working again. The problem was caused by installing a new version of nvidia-kernel which is tied to the nvidia-glx. You probably got it from the club download site when you upgraded since that package is not on the update server. The moral is when doing an update use the --update switch or else stuff you do not want updated might get updated. To get X working again all you have to do is install Midnight Commander if it is not already with urpmi mc Then 'mc' to start midnight commander. mc is a text based file manager. Use it to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and find the line Driver "nvidia" in the "Devices" section and replace the word nvidia with nv Then 'service dm restart' and X should come up. You will be using the open source 'nv' driver instead of the nvidia driver, but then we can show you how to update the nvidia driver and get this box straight again." After following these instructions by buddy sent the following email" "I followed the steps you gave me and I was brought to a login screen that I have never seen. It has a list of names (users) on the left and two entry fields; 1. Login name 2. Password. I could not get past it. None of the login/pw combos worked."

Well, it looks like the update screwed me. I was helping a buddy last night and doing the update via ssh. Just got this message from him this morning. "I rebooted and got a screen full of error msgs. Brings me to a system prompt from which I can do nothing. Seems like I'm screwed since I don't have a backup. What do I do now?" Well, I guess it is reinstall time. I knew better than to try to do an update without a backup. (had problems trying to get mondo/mindi back to work.) I didn't have this problem when I installed 2006. There were no update problems, signature issues or otherwise, and mondo/mindi worked fine. I had to back off 2006 because I couldn't get my dual monitors to work, but at lease the backup and update worked. I'm probably too much of a newbie myself to try to muddle through this. Well, one of the many error messages is the following: "Nvidia kernel module is version 1.0.8174. X Module is version 1.0.7616. Ensure that kernel and nvidia driver files have same driver version. Fatal server error. No screens found. This was just after doing the first update after a fresh install. [moved from Software by spinynorman]