vincentv

It seems to me that 'something' must be started in the reboot sequence which makes everything work; then that 'something' is stopped when exiting a session but not re-started when starting a new session. What that 'something' is; thats the question: probably somethng daft like a file permission (msec?). That might be the answer, but as its only a nuiisance and not a major problem I'll probably wait until I get round to installing 10.1 (realplayer is fine for most things, if not: reboot) Thanks anyway

The computer is a home computer, so several family members use it, logging in and out of their own sessions. Here is what happens. When the machine, running Mdk10.0, is switched on, or rebooted, and the first person logs in, the sound works perfectly. You can use any player (realplayer 10, mplayer, totem, xmms, ..) in any order, and the sound plays without a problem. If the first person logs out, and a second person logs in (including the person who just logged out), only realplayer10 works (realplayer 8 sometimes worked) . Any other sound app will load the first sound fragment and just freeze - leaving the sound fragment repeating endlessly untill the app is terminated. A consequence of this, is that when the second person logs in, KDE startup fails as the sound system starts and the sytem notifications kick in. To stop this from happening, I have disabled the sound system in each person's KDE set up, and yet, even with the sound sytem disabled, the sound still works perfectly for the first user and only realplayer10 works for the second user! What I have done so far: -Read every forum topic I could find! -Tried a completely different sound card (I have a sound blaster) -Tried using Gnome -Reconfigured using Alsa config -Reconfigured using Mandrake Control Centre -Reconfigured manually -Tried using an older kernel (2.6.7mdk? and 2.4.? multimedia) -Ensured the system is completely up-to date with the latest patches, bug fixes and kernel for Mdk10. -Recomplied the kernel, removing all OSS modules and leaving only ALSA. -Checked that the owners and permissions of the sound devices (/dev/snd, /dev/sound) seem correct. after each new log-in -Checked that alsa is running (it must be, since realplayer works and there is no other sound sytem). -Checked the .xsessionerrors file for clues: The only one I get is that, if kmix is left on the sytem tray there is a message saying that alsamix could not be found. If I try running kmix from a teminal I get the same message the first time, but it runs the second time. I don't know if this is relavent, or a 'red herring'. -Checked /var/log/messages for clues: no obvious ones. -Run the non working apps (eg Totem) from a terminal to check for error messages, but there were none, they just froze after the first sound fragemt was loaded. None of this made any difference. Now my son has Mdk10 on his PC and has no such problem, I have Mdk10 on my PC at work and have no such problem. The sound sytem started 'going a bit funny' in Mdk9.2 - is it some setting / script that was not upgraded properly? Is it something to do with the older Asus board in the PC - but why, then, does it work perfectly after a reboot? I've been trying to sort this out for months now, it became personal: me vs the PC, I will beat this! ... but now I have to concede that I have run out of ideas.

20 seconds! Is that all? Mine takes far longer than that and I have a 2.5GHz Athlon! However, the reason it does this is simple. In between starting lilo and Init appearing the system (among other things) checks the hard drives and devices reported by the machine's BIOS to find out what they are etc. (look in the /var/log/messages - you need to be root) My mother board, an ASUS A7N8X - Delux reports 6 harddrives: hda - my first hard drive hdb - my second hard drive hdc - my cd burner hdd - my dvd player these are not a problem since they exist. It also reports two other drives hde, hdg which are part of the serial ATA RAID system (if you choose to use it). Now, there are no drives on this RAID system, but because the BIOS has reported their existance the operating system keeps tying to communicate with each of them and it tries for ages until it eventually gives up and moves on to continue with the boot process Here's an extract from my messages. I have marked the lines >>>> ------------------------------------ Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: NFORCE2: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:09.0 Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: NFORCE2: chipset revision 162 Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: NFORCE2: not 100%% native mode: will probe irqs later Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: AMD_IDE: Bios didn't set cable bits corectly. Enabling workaround. Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: AMD_IDE: nVidia Corporation nForce2 IDE UDMA133 (rev a2) UDMA133 controller on pci00:09.0 Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: SiI3112 Serial ATA: IDE controller at PCI slot 01:0b.0 Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: SiI3112 Serial ATA: chipset revision 2 Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: SiI3112 Serial ATA: not 100%% native mode: will probe irqs later Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: ide2: MMIO-DMA , BIOS settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: ide3: MMIO-DMA , BIOS settings: hdg:pio, hdh:pio Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: hda: Maxtor 6Y080P0, ATA DISK drive Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: hdb: Maxtor 6Y080P0, ATA DISK drive Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: blk: queue c0181bc0, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff) Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: blk: queue c0181cfc, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff) Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: hdc: ARTEC WRR-52Z 1.15 20030107, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: hdd: AOPEN DVD1648/LKY, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive >>>>Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: hde: no response (status = 0xfe) >>>>Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: hdg: no response (status = 0xfe) Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15 Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: hda: attached ide-disk driver. Feb 2 15:35:07 vince kernel: hda: host protected area => 1 ------------------------------------------ Unfortunately, I cannot disable these drives in the BIOS (even though it says that they are disabled) so the boot process always checks them out. Other devices that might cause boot delays are unused on-board lan, you might want to disable them in the BIOS if you don't use them.

That makes perfect sense aru. In fact, if that is how it works, then suid would pose a major security breach since all scripts would acquire root privilages! The task of maintaining script security would then fall on on the interpreter - which is not a good thing since fragmentating security tasks would lead to inconsistancies across the operating system and be difficult to maintain - the whole point of a modular, object oriented system is to avoid this by providing a single 'expert' to handle a commonly used task. Vince

Thanks for the reply tyme, I did a bit of experimenting by changing the script's owner but the User Id was never set to the owner - no matter who the owner or who ran it. After re-reading the man and info pages followed by some more searching on the net, I think I have found that I am half right - if SUID is set then the file will run with the permissions of the owner, not the user. This allows root, for example, to allow controlled access to areas of the system not normally accessable to normal users - for changing passwords for example. A search for files with SUID bits set find / -perm +4000 -user root -type f -print showed that there were many such files. However they were all binary executables, not scripts of any description. So perhaps that is the answer: suid and guid only apply to binary executable files - well its the best I can come up with. It seams a shame really, as 'suid' ing scripts would be really useful.

Hi My understanding of suid, when applied to an executable file, is that when it is run, the file runs with the permissions of the file owner, not the user that runs the file. I've tested it with this simple shell script: #!/bin/bash #list root's directory echo I am $(whoami) ls /root the script is in /usr/local/bin and owned by root, is executable by all and does not have suid If I run it as root I get I am root bin core.10216 core.7580 core.7598 crossover tips Desktop drakx ffjuser40ce grepresults icon.ico javaws.png MDRepository.log mimeinstall.results ooo_setup_english.pdf Openoffice PC and System Info plugininstall.results registry results testprintfile.sxw tmp vpd.properties wacom_drv_old.o wacom_old.o as you would expect if I run it as me I get I am vincent ls: /root: Permission denied as expected If I now set the script's permissions to Set UID, I would expect to get the same output when I run it as me , as when I run it as root. But nothing changes! Incidentally, how do you capture screen output in a terminal? It doen't let you copy it so I had to resort to redirecting the output to a file. Thanks Vince

Thanks, I'll try it that if it keeps happening

Hi Just after starting KDE I noticed that the CPU was running at 100% for no apparent reason. The process manager revealed the culprit to be kio_thumbnail using 95% - it eventually stopped after about 5 minutes. Does this program automatically run in the background periodically to update thumbnail picture views - I wasn't viewing any directories with pictures in at the time? Vince

I also have a dedicated /tmp partition (2.3GB) as well as dedicated /var (1.1GB), /opt (2.9GB) on a 40GB drive. The problem is that Mandrake's default partitioning when using separate /usr and /home partitions, only allocates about 480MB for the root (/) partition and this includes the space for /tmp, /var and /opt - which is wholey inadequate, especially if you are: * installing non mandrake system programs (I have crossover plugin, moneydance, Posiedon -UML editor, Netbeans - Java development, smartCVS and wine) which normally go in /opt. (/usr/local is usually used for variations on a standard system product - e.g a newer version of mozilla than the one that was installed by Mandrake) *printing large files (which normally go via /var) *downloading large files (especially Mandrake ISO images!) which normally use /tmp Replacing /tmp with a link to another partition directory e.g /home/tmp doesn't always work, some programs need the real directory