[Sussex] SuSE 9.3 more curious behaviour.

[Steve Dobson]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2005 at 08:22:39PM +0100, John D. wrote:
> I think that I've solved some of the problems I've been experiencing, 
> but not all.
> 
> I installed firefox, thunderbird, opera, mozilla to name but a few. All 
> these apps will start as root, but not as user.

How did you install them?  And what user were you when you installed them?
 
> I seem to have them showing as my user as the "owner", and they show in 
> the users group. I'm not sure what I should be seeing if I check the 
> permissions, plus, previously I've experienced a problem with a 
> different distro where it seemed that I had to have "exec" as an fstab 
> option, is that correct??

The fact that files are showing as owned by your user account suggests
that you ran the install as yourself.  Did you follow the instructions
on how to install to the letter?  It maybe that the installer needs to
be run as root, or that some files need to be moved or modified if not
installed as root.  There are so many possibilities that I can't event
begin to think what the problem is.

You could try running one of these apps from the command line.  It is
likely that it is reporting an error, if you are trying to run it from 
the GUI then that error report may be getting lost.
 
> Because my fstab looks like this
> 
> /dev/hda3            /                    ext3       acl,user_xattr        
> 1 1
> /dev/hda1            /boot                ext3       acl,user_xattr        
> 1 2
> /dev/hda4            /home                ext3       defaults              
> 1 2
> /dev/hda2            swap                 swap       pri=42                
> 0 0
> devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       
> 0 0
> proc                 /proc                proc       defaults              
> 0 0
> usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto                
> 0 0
> sysfs                /sys                 sysfs      noauto                
> 0 0
> /dev/cdrecorder      /media/cdrecorder    subfs      
> noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
> /dev/dvd             /media/dvd           subfs      
> noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
> /dev/fd0             /media/floppy        subfs      
> noauto,fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0
> 
> and I've not seen an fstab that has stuff like "acl, user_xattr" and the 
> like.

ACLs are Access Control Lists, "user_xattr" is part of ACLs too.  ACLs
allow you to grant permissions to given accounts rather that just the 
owner, group or other set.  In a home system such as yours where there
is only one (or maybe two) users they are an added complication you just
don't need.
 
See you Thursday
Steve

-- 
Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades.
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