Peter Teichmann wrote:
>when playing around with different users I found that "stty erase ^H"
>does only work properly if I login as root. If I login as another user
>than root it deletes the key from the input buffer, but it does not
>overwrite the wrong char with a space and also does not take the cursor
>one position back.

Dunno about this one.  Maybe root and the other users have different terminal
types set -- try: 'echo $TERM' to find out the terminal setting.

>Another problem: When I login as root I get the advice that I should not
>login as root, but shall use su. So I created another user uid 256 gid
>256, but if I now try to "su root" I get a message that I am in the wrong
>group to su root.

You need to be in group wheel to be able to use su (this is not true of all Unix
variants).  Edit /etc/group to fix this -- the list of user names in the last
field is comma separated, and don't put in spaces (IIRC people have had problems
with spaces).

BTW, the "don't log in as root" is (I think) just meant to discourage people
from habitually logging in as root (a bad thing since you can delete vital
bits of the system, etc) .  It's better to only su to root to do the jobs you
need to be root for (and by setting up suitable group/user permissions you can
avoid quite a few of those).

Cheers,
Olly