Non DSL User
Forum: myDSL Extensions (deprecated)
Topic: Non DSL User
started by: spotslayer
Posted by spotslayer on June 20 2005,00:39
Hi all, I have been using v1.2 on a hard drive install. I had not done much so when I saw that 1.2.1 was out I installed it on my hard drive. Everything seemed fine. I installed one or two themes and synaptics from mydsl menu. I shutdown and went out for a while. I came back turned on my computer everything booted normally. When I tried to use the mydsl panel I get an error somthing like this. Alert Non DSL user. This seemed to happened after the download. Can someone please shed some light on this for me? Never happened with 1.2. David
Posted by adssse on June 20 2005,00:54
Are you logged in as root?
Posted by SaidinUnleashed on June 20 2005,00:58
to use the MyDSL panel or mydsl-load extensions, you must be logged as user "dsl"
Posted by Helen on June 20 2005,04:41
I am running DSL 1.2.1. I logged in as dsl, ran MyDSl, worked fine.Then I logged in as root, ran MyDSL, got the "Non-DSL User Error" described above.
Then I logged back in as dsl. Now I always get the error, even after rebooting, even though I am definitely logged in as 'dsl'.
I really, really hate it when people give the obvious answer in a help forum. Give us a little credit here, folks. By giving the knee-jerk answer, you just insult me and make yourself look like a moron. Everyone gets upset and nothing gets solved.
So why do I get "Non-DSL user error" every time I try to use MyDSL even though I am logged in correctly?
Posted by roberts on June 20 2005,05:59
Helen, from reading your post may I infer that this is hard drive install?it is always most helpful to state how you run your system.
I think that if you delete the flag file /tmp/noload it will clear up your problem.
Mydsl is not really designed for hard drive installed system. If you were running a liveCD or compressed install the "flag" would go away upon reboot. For hard drive installs it is recommended to use the Debian package management system whereas you would be able to add and delete packages. With the liveCD there is normally not enough space for all the files needed by Debain package management system. That is why we created the slimmed down mydsl extensions. When there is a problem you reboot and your back to a known working state. So, you may indeed have found a bug or "trap" when running mydsl, using user root while running from a hard drive install. We find less and less users, and especially the beta testers as well as the developer do not do hard drive install except to test basic install works to boot. Hope that will clear up your issue.
Posted by spotslayer on June 20 2005,11:51
Now that I read Helens post I realize that is exactly what happened to me. I had tried to use my DSL while logged in as root and have had this problem ever since then. I will do what roberts suggest since he knows this system as well or better than anyone. I'll report my results.David
Posted by Caspar_s on June 20 2005,14:05
In defense of people who answer questions with "knee-jerk" responses:if the question is phrased properly quoting everything you have tried - then we will obviously not include those...
We get a lot of people asking how to make everything stay how it was and not have to change their background evrytime they reboot - response - read the first page that comes up when you boot DSL.
deciding how to answer someone is kinda difficult when you have no idea what their expertise is and what they have already tried.Hope you get everything sorted out, Cya
Posted by spotslayer on June 23 2005,01:08
roberts tip worked for me.D
Posted by Helen on July 05 2005,18:23
Roberts,Thanks for your answer -- I'll try it. I really appreciate the effort you put into answering the question, and whether it works or not I thank you for the help.
I did not say that I was using a hard drive install because the original poster framed his question that way. I should have made it clear.
That said, I stopped using DSL because of this bug. I cannot abide cryptic error messages with no log trail, so I gave up in absolute disgust. I have used DSL since the beginning, and version 1.2.1 was the first time I have encountered this problem I prefer code to be properly commented -- though I can live without it -- but an error message that says "Non-DSL User Error" when DSL is the name of the OS as well as the default user is totally ridiculous.
Sadly, the main problem I have with Linux in general is the "land hazards" who chime in with ignorant answers to reasonable questions. It is a complete obstruction of the troubleshooting and support process. If someone has gotten to the point of asking for help on a message board such as this, it is reasonable to assume that they have tried to solve the problem on their own, whether or not they say so.
It would be very simple to reproduce my and David's problem: do a hard drive install with 1.2.1 and play around with it for a few minutes, installing MyDSL extensions under various circumstances. I did this at least a dozen times before my post, and every time the behaviour was the same. I suspect that this is an easily reproducible system-wide bug specific to v1.2.1 and it deserves more than a "you have to be logged in as dsl". Believe me, I've read the documentation and this forum and I know this.
My bottom line is: please don't assume anything when you respond to a request for help. Smug one-liners infuriate the users and obstruct the solution. If you are going to bother to respond at all, please take a little care with your response: recap known issues, spell out dependencies, libraries, sources, locations and normal practices. Even if you have heard these a hundred times over, others have not. If you cannot answer comprehensively, please keep silent so that when I Google for an answer I can find the real information, not the hundred one liners that tell me what I already know but assume everything that I don't
Helen
Posted by mikshaw on July 05 2005,18:55
As far as I can see, the original replies were not "smug one-liners". They were in fact very direct, and correct, answers, although not thorough. Perhaps they could have added one more piece of useful info:Once you use the myDSL system as root, it's broken. Going back to user dsl doesn't help after it's broken. Any files which were affected by the previous root action will need to be fixed manually before the myDSL system will work properly again. As far as I know, this means returning ownership of some files in /home/dsl to dsl, as well as some files and directories in /var/tmp.
This is the reason some of us bugged Robert to implement the non-dsl warning message, although i agree the message itself is quite vague.
Posted by ke4nt1 on July 05 2005,19:20
What an arrogant, negative and disgusting post Helen left for us all to view... that was helpful..
Everyone here is family, and allowed to offer any suggestions
that they feel may help another, without ridicule..
Most times, a new user's issues are resolved by mentioning
the simplest of things, that may have been overlooked..
I won't go into detail about the numerous errors and flaws
in Helen's logic and responses. They are obvious to anyone
who HAS read thru the docs and forums, and knows better..
I invite everyone to contribute to the forums, no matter what
your skill level with DSL, or any other linux experience is.
"Moron", "Land Hazards", "Ignorant", "Smug", "Keep Silent",
and "Don't Bother" have no place here in the DSL forums..
..and Spotslayer, thank you for the positive feedback.
It will be addressed in the next release..
For the moment, consider it another hazard with using
the myDSL system with the HDInstalls..
It has ALWAYS been the suggestion of the DSL staff
thruout the forums that HDinstalls should use Apt,
and not myDSL, for package management..
73
ke4nt
Posted by adssse on July 06 2005,00:01
Since I was one of the first to respond in this thread I am guessing I was the "Land Hazard". I apologize if anyone was offended or if I was viewed as lazy for not posting a longer response. I am pretty new to dsl and often times I am helped by someone stating the obvious to me. That being said I was just trying to help by removing one of the most obvious possibilities since I was not sure how to completely solve the problem. I have enjoyed my time very much in these forums and have been helped by many kind hearted people along the way. I hope that I might be of some help to someone in the future and apologize if it seems otherwise.
Posted by roberts on July 06 2005,00:57
As the author of MyDSL system I answered Helen's issue courteously and quite completely. This should have satisified any reasonable user. To state that this is the reason to leave in disgust, is not being reasonable. Computers are made useful by humans, humans are not perfect. I am certainly not and never will be. There is not a single distribution that is perfect. As far as the error message being cryptic I would suggest to use www.dictionary.com to look up the meaning of the prefix -non. This error condition is just a root user error, although being root can break things, being any other user than user dsl will not work either, therefore other than dsl is not dsl is a non dsl user condition. Now a reasonable person, once the bug was fully explained would come to the conculstion that this error message is not cryptic. As for the complaint that the disto name is the same as the user name, what I can I say, ever heard of knoppix?I also don't think any of the posts were dis-courteous. I think our community is most helpful. Sometimes, it is something simple that one may over look and a simple answer will suffice. I usually refrain from trying to answer all the posts. I truly appreciate those users who post answers to these forums. We have all level of users and all of their input is apprecaiated and valued. I will jump in, as I did in this thread, when I feel I need to. Otherwise, I get much satisfaction from seeing users use the code that I write and are able to explain, share their knowledge and enthusiasm for DSL.
Posted by cbagger01 on July 06 2005,15:45
I'm going WAY off-topic here, but...In my opinion, "General protection fault 0EFF" in MSWindows and "Kernel Panic" in the linux kernel is something less than an easily understood error message.
While I agree with mikshaw that the error message could be less confusing, I also happen to be from the old school philosophy of:
T.S.
If you can do better, go ahead and try. Nobody is stopping you from developing and maintaining your own distro. However, if a single "cryptic" error message is going to make you wipe your hard drive in disgust, I would instead consider trading in your computer for an embedded Internet appliance like WebTV.
I agree that DSL could probably use some improvements to the user interface but the developers tend to concentrate more on adding new functionality than doing this. It is a strategy that makes sense to me because
(1) The existing user interface is "good enough" for the majority of advanced and moderately advanced users that like to toy with the OS
(2) The novice users usually don't tweak things too much, so they don't get themselves into trouble because they don't break things.
This leaves a group of moderately advanced users that sometimes break stuff and get lost. They usually are more than happy to post questions on the forum and don't take offense when other people try to help them.
So, from where I sit, things are working fine except for a few hypersensitive malcontents who are better off with WebTV than a Linux distro.
Posted by clivesay on July 06 2005,15:58
| Quote (cbagger01 @ July 06 2005,10:45) |
| In my opinion, "General protection fault 0EFF" in MSWindows and "Kernel Panic" in the linux kernel is something less than an easily understood error message. |
That was my first thought. If you can recite the meanings of blue screen stop errors in M$ off the top of your head, I'm impressed, especially since one error can be a multitude of different things! It's hard enough just to make sure you get all the zeros counted to enter into google correctly!
Just struck me as a funny comment that 'non-dsl user' is too cryptic.
As Ke4nt said, using the mydsl system for HD installs has always been strongly discouraged. That is a job for apt. If you want to use mydsl on your HD frugal is the best way to go 99% of the time.
Chris
Posted by SaidinUnleashed on July 06 2005,16:07
My favorite error message is in Windows (of course) "Unknown has caused an unknown error in <unknown> and will be shut down" followed by a core memory dump and a reboot before you can write the 50 character hex error code,Real easy to understand, you know?