Multiuser Puppy 4.2.1

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8-bit · #21 Post by **8-bit** » Sat 10 Oct 2009, 23:48

Running as a user other than root, and mount disabled, one could not save anything to a flash drive that they had created.
Also, 'sudo' gives command not found.
'su root' requests a password and works. Verifiable with 'whoami'
The permission denied messges and not showing up.
trying to mount a device brings up an empty window with rox.
After 'su root', mounting only works from the command line. It does not automatically open a window with ROX.
A check using Pmount shows the drive was mounted and using Pmount after command line mounting will bring up a ROX window of the drive.
I have not tried to edit any files that had root as owner so that is a still to do.

#22 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:42

I didn't install sudo. Forgot. Sorry. Maybe I'll make one next weekend. I'll try to get pmount running then too.

The permission denied messges and not showing up.

Sorry, not following you. You'll have to elaborate a little about what you're talking about here.

After 'su root', mounting only works from the command line. It does not automatically open a window with ROX.

How do you mean? If you do a su root, all that affects is that specific terminal window and any programs launched from it. So to mount with any way besides the mount command, you would have to launch that other method from the terminal that has the root privileges.

swarnick · #23 Post by **swarnick** » Sat 17 Oct 2009, 11:50

Pizzasgood wrote:The link is working for me right now too. Must have been a hiccup.

just tried multi user puppy,and it does not want to shut down,it just restarts x,even trying from the terminal.
Okay. I'll need some more information though:

How are you trying to reboot? As root or as a user?

If a user, is it a member of the "power" group?

Is this the first boot, or have you already created a pup_save.2fs file?

Are you using Xorg or Xvesa?

I am having this same problem. To answer the questions
1. Initial boot, therefore I am running as root.
2. I am Booting and then running from a usb drive. I made the usb drive with unetbootin and the lastest iso.
3. Xvesa 1024x768x24
4. No save file yet because I can't shut down the first time to create one.

Hope this helps. Obviously this issue is a showstopper.

ralphv · #24 Post by **ralphv** » Sat 17 Oct 2009, 15:43

swarnick wrote:
Pizzasgood wrote:The link is working for me right now too. Must have been a hiccup.

just tried multi user puppy,and it does not want to shut down,it just restarts x,even trying from the terminal.
Okay. I'll need some more information though:

How are you trying to reboot? As root or as a user?

If a user, is it a member of the "power" group?

Is this the first boot, or have you already created a pup_save.2fs file?

Are you using Xorg or Xvesa?

I am also having this problem.
I am running it in virtualbox using xvesa.
I used a pup save for puppy 4.20, couldn't
make one because never have shut down.
Managed to make a user, also won't
shut down for the user.

Ralph

#25 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sat 17 Oct 2009, 16:05

Okay, I'll take a look. I don't think it occurred to me to test shutting down from Xvesa.

ralphv · #26 Post by **ralphv** » Sat 17 Oct 2009, 17:48

Pizzasgood wrote:Okay, I'll take a look. I don't think it occurred to me to test shutting down from Xvesa.

I got virtualbox guest additions added to it and was able to shutdown in Xorg
Ralph

#27 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sat 17 Oct 2009, 19:37

I found the problem and am fixing it now. (Temporary fix: just try a second time and it should work then.)

I also fixed the issue with Pmount (it was passing options to the mount command, which doesn't work when you are a user, so I set the mount command up to detect when that fails and try with nothing but the mountpoint).

I'm working on sudo.

#28 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sat 17 Oct 2009, 21:39

Okay, I uploaded "revision 1". The first post has been updated with the new download link. I also updated the "gory details" thread with the new information and links to the _DEV, _DOC, and _NLS packages for PAM and Sudo, in case anybody needs those. All the other packages listed there that were affected by the updates in r1 have been updated too.

Changes:

Added Linux-PAM
Added sudo
Added "wheel" group and edited adduser-wizard to reflect this (unchecked by default)
Edited ~/.xinitrc to use /tmp/${USER}-videomode rather than /tmp/videomode when determining if video-wizard was being run (fixes Xvesa reboot issue)
Edited /bin/mount to try again with only the mountpoint when the first try fails (fixes Pmount issue)
Edited /bin/mount to use "$@" rather than "$*" in the calls to mount-FULL
Edited /etc/gshadow to add the missing line for the "audio" group

raffy · #29 Post by **raffy** » Sun 18 Oct 2009, 01:30

ERROR: The new link gets the same old ISO!!!

Am guessing that you would not post a new ISO with the same old name, but then I have to confirm before I complain.

I got the "new" ISO from the new link but got the same old ISO.

Anyway, the URL of the new ISO should be evident:
browserloadofcoolness.com..puppy-4.2.1-MULTIUSER-r1.iso

Thanks!

#30 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sun 18 Oct 2009, 05:00

Oops. I edited the visible part but forgot to update the actual url part. Thanks for pointing that out.

richard.a · #31 Post by **richard.a** » Mon 19 Oct 2009, 07:06

Pizzasgood You have done a great job here. Thanks mate.

I saw earlier that you weren't going to do this for other puppies; wondering, though, if you would be able to do an add-on (pupget or something) that contains the extras needed to do this? Like Warren did with the EZ-pup updater he built.

Have tried the first version and got similar problems to your correspondents sent in, so felt shouldn't merely repeat others comments. However have downloaded R1 ISO so hope to look in another day or so.

It looks nice on the AspireOne - as nice as on a 19inch monitor

Thanks again

Richard
where the crows fly backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes

#32 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Tue 20 Oct 2009, 00:02

The problem with just making an addon is that the system scripts are where the most complicated modifications are. At the same time, those are the files most likely to change between versions. A .pet could theoretically do it by applying patches to modify those files rather than replace them. But as soon as a line of a script that was modified in a patch gets changed in a version of Puppy, the patch would no longer work and I'd get a bunch of people begging for an updated version of the patch.

If you look at the how-to thread I linked to in the first post, I did provide packages of the additional software I packaged or wrote, along with archives of many of the files that I modified. But I decided not to bother trying to automate the procedure. Besides the issue I mentioned, where you know that it failed, doing things automatically could lead to situations where a change between versions introduced some code that the addon doesn't catch. In that circumstance it would look like it worked. Maybe it would even boot and run properly. But there could be a subtle bug somewhere that would only come up in rare situations and be hard to diagnose. And it would be very bad if the user's motivation in using it was security related, because he could have all kinds of holes without knowing it. So that would make releasing such a thing almost feel negligent on my part.

And anyway, that would take even more time and energy, which I would much rather apply to other projects now that I've accomplished my goal here.

richard.a · #33 Post by **richard.a** » Tue 20 Oct 2009, 09:50

Fair enuff mate.

I totally understand

Take care.

Richard
where we went from winter to summer within 24hrs... the cats were indoors yesterday for the indoors warmth; today they are indoors because of the heat outside

stevoomba · #34 Post by **stevoomba** » Wed 21 Oct 2009, 09:24

It's always puzzled me why Puppy's never had the multi-user option. I'm quite happy to be root, but I don't see why there shouldn't be the option to go multi even in the official releases.

Thanks for the work PG.
Steve

richard.a · #35 Post by **richard.a** » Wed 21 Oct 2009, 11:12

stevoomba wrote:It's always puzzled me why Puppy's never had the multi-user option.

From what I've read, the original intention of the distribution was to have the fastest possible loading time, while running as a live distribution - in effect a diskless machine.

The less code that has to be loaded at boot-up, the faster it will run. And apart from the possibility of deleting the whole file system tree by a root user, there could be no security problems. That tree being located in memory, copied from the CD, it would be restored immediately on reboot.

The rest of this post may be slightly off-topic but is provided to explain the antagonism that exists over root user.

Having spent several years assisting with the development of another so-called "root only" system - which actually was a misnomer because it did provide multi-user facilities - it's interesting to note that its very wide user base never had one reported - or even one anecdotal - incident of invasive access by the actions of a cracker (NOT hacker).

Regardless of that, there will always be a vocal minority who will be determined to force their views on those who actually have "been there, done that" as it is called.

FYI I was assisting with the testing and release of several BSD-Unix versions over a couple of years or so at one time, and I got into really hot water through suggesting on their forum that a range of nicely coloured red wallpapers (backgrounds) for those who chose to use a GUI login as root, along with instructions on how to convert root GUI prohibition to root GUI enabling, and vice-versa, in Gnome and KDE was available on my website for those who wanted to exercise their own personal choice... for example ubuntu which by default does not allow root logins, vs Sun Java Desktop Linux which does (both of these are Gnome-based).

http://micro-hard.dreamhosters.com/root_wallpaper
http://micro-hard.dreamhosters.com/root_GUI_login

There was such an uproar by the vocal minority that I shifted my interest elsewhere.

WarMocK · #36 Post by **WarMocK** » Wed 21 Oct 2009, 11:45

richard.a wrote:FYI I was assisting with the testing and release of several BSD-Unix versions over a couple of years or so at one time, and I got into really hot water through suggesting on their forum that a range of nicely coloured red wallpapers (backgrounds) for those who chose to use a GUI login as root, along with instructions on how to convert root GUI prohibition to root GUI enabling, and vice-versa, in Gnome and KDE was available on my website for those who wanted to exercise their own personal choice... for example ubuntu which by default does not allow root logins, vs Sun Java Desktop Linux which does (both of these are Gnome-based).

http://micro-hard.dreamhosters.com/root_wallpaper
http://micro-hard.dreamhosters.com/root_GUI_login

There was such an uproar by the vocal minority that I shifted my interest elsewhere.

And those who make up this minority are the people who give the rest of the linux community a bad reputation.

I had enough discussions about that with other people when they asked me "how good this Linux thingy actually is". And right now, some of them are actually using various Linux distributions occationally, which is better than if they were still sticking to Windows only. There are enough people out there who would give Linux a chance, but are scared off by those wannabe-hackers who fear to lose their "elite" status if Linux gets too userfriendly and eventually reaches the masses.
Puppy Linux is PRETTY userfriendly when compared to other distros (okay, I am a former gentoo user, so anything is probably more userfriendly to me xD), but it still has lots of edges and stuff that needs some touch-up. And multi-user capabilities are a good addition imho, even if you don't need it personally - others may do for various (plausible) reasons, and you have to think about those epople as well if you want to get more feedback and drivers from the hardware vendors.
I'd love to see Puppy Linux 5.x offering optional multi-user support, but that's just me. It definitely wouldn't hurt.

8-bit · #37 Post by **8-bit** » Wed 21 Oct 2009, 20:30

In setting up a new user, if the new user is not allowed to shut down the computer, none of his work gets saved.
Also, If he cannot mount a usb flash stick, he cannot save his work externally.
So is there a way to lock the user out of accessing drives already installed and still give him the ability to mount and unmount drives added by him?
Just my thoughts..

maxtothemax · #38 Post by **maxtothemax** » Thu 22 Oct 2009, 01:43

Is there a good way to allow ordinary users to run the "connect" script?

EDIT: I've been poking thru the files on the PuppyLinux installation, and I can see that most of the applications are implemented as shell scripts. It should be easy to edit the appropriate scripts, add "sudo" to the right commands within those scripts, then give no-password permission for those commands in the sudoers file.

I'm working on the net-setup.sh and wag-profiles.sh files right now but I really don't know too much about hacking puppy linux. I'm not exactly sure what other files I may need to modify and if I will need to make any other changes (although thankfully the scripts look well-written.) Perhaps a real puppy linux developer would have an easier time of it than me?

#39 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Thu 22 Oct 2009, 03:37

8-bit wrote:In setting up a new user, if the new user is not allowed to shut down the computer, none of his work gets saved.

You mean when he reaches for the poweroff button rather than getting root to come powerdown properly? The point in letting you disallow rebooting privileges is for people who are not supposed to turn the computer off at all (probably because it's a server so you want it on 24-7). If they can simply do it manually, then you need to either make so that they can't do that (place the physical box out of their reach, for example), consider punishments for people who mistreat your hardware, or give up and let them poweroff correctly so that they don't screw up your harddrives....

Basically the idea is that if you for example give people SSH access to your server, you probably don't want to let them poweroff the server on their own. People logging in with SSH generally are not within arms reach of the server, so manually hitting the button isn't an issue.

As for limiting the mounting of specific partitions, yes, you can do this. All you have to do is edit /etc/fstab and remove the "group" option for any partition that you don't want users to be able to mount/unmount. Any new partitions that are detected will automatically be given the group option.

@maxtothemax: Wouldn't it be easier to just use sudo to run the network wizard itself, rather than modifying it for all the little parts? Or does it not work that way? I have no experience with sudo, besides when I installed, configured, and tested it last weekend. I'm thinking you should be able to configure sudo so that anybody in the "network" group (which you'd have to create) could run "sudo /full/path/to/network_wizard", and then set up a wrapper script that runs that command and replace the "connect" icon with that.

maxtothemax · #40 Post by **maxtothemax** » Thu 22 Oct 2009, 05:59

Sorry, I should have explained-- I'm going to be turning this laptop over to a six-year-old girl as soon as I'm done setting it up.

The wrapper script would work I guess, but its hardly elegant in my opinion. I could clobber that together as a contingency but I'd prefer to do it "right" if I can.

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Multiuser Puppy 4.2.1

Cannot exit from multiuser puppy 4.2.1

Re: Cannot exit from multiuser puppy 4.2.1

different ISO