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Topic: No virtual terminals with X

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tbielawa

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Posts: 11
Joined: June 2005

Posted: June 18 2005,04:16

Another option is to make a remaster with the passwords already set. I did this so I could have ssh access to a headless machine. In DSL 1.1 this was as simple as booting off the CD, running passwd, as remastering without changing anything. In DSL 1.2 this doesn't work because the password files are on a read only file system of course. I'm still trying to figure out what changed from DSL 1.1 to DSL 1.2 to break this, but after seeing the error I'm not sure it should have ever worked in DSL 1.1.

mikshaw

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Posts: 4856
Joined: July 2004

Posted: June 18 2005,04:22

Do you think it would work to boot with 'secure', set the passwords, and then back up /etc/passwd? As far as I can tell it's a file that can be overwritten from backup even in 1.2

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tbielawa

Group: Members
Posts: 11
Joined: June 2005

Posted: June 18 2005,04:34

I've never used the 'secure' cheat code, or the backups and restores. I've always just done a quick remaster instead. I don't see why it wouldn't work, assuming the password files are restored soon enough. /etc/passwd doesn't actually contain the password hashes anymore. The hashes are in /etc/shadow. I think there might still be important information in /etc/passwd that gets updated when you set the password on a stock DSL CD (like the account locked flag?). There are also two files that I'm not sure about (I think they DSL specific, maybe even just left over from the build process) /etc/passwd- and /etc/shadow-. I would try backing up all four files.

mikshaw

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Joined: July 2004

Posted: June 18 2005,14:51

/etc/shadow was the file, thanks. So far seems to be no problem restoring just this file.
I don't use the backup/restore feature either, but i do use custom myDSL packages to do a similar kind of restoration.
My new myDSL package now contains
/opt/bootlocal.sh
/etc/inittab
/etc/shadow

No remastering, no fiddling with settings during boot. Runlevel 5 is reached, including 4 terminals ready for login just like in all the other distros i've used. I wonder how it is that you helped me accomplish what was your own request, and you still have to do a work-around....I can't imagine how two people would get different results on the same system, unless there is a hardware limitation on your end, or maybe something was distorted during your remaster. I have yet to remaster, or even burn a recent CD, since the myDSL system + frugal provides me with as much flexibility as i need.

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tbielawa

Group: Members
Posts: 11
Joined: June 2005

Posted: June 18 2005,19:53

I just tested on another computer (this would be number 6), and a stock DSL 1.2.1 CD works as expected. Knoppix 3.4 (from which DSL 1.2.1 appears to be derived from) works fine on all of the computers. So something that was modified to create DSL 1.2.1 must be causing the problem only on some hardware (I’m thinking maybe a stripped down X server). I’m just going to start replacing things until I get it to work properly across the board, or irrecoverably break something ;).

You might want to consider also replacing /.bash_profile with an empty file so you can log in as root in runlevel 5. The stock /.bash_profile will automatically log you in as DSL anytime you log in as root in runlevel 5.

19 replies since June 13 2005,04:27

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