On 30-Sep-98 Bob Savage spoke unto us all:
#  I'm very new to this and having a raft of problems. First, I managed to set
#  up a second account that can 'su' to root permissions -- sorta. I can
#  switch (or whatever that does), but then I cannot (for example, shutdown
#  (e.g. 'halt'); I need to login as root to do that, at which point I get
#  this annoying message that I shouldn't be logging in as root. So my first
#  question is, is it that bad to login as root if I am just doing it to
#  shutdown the computer?

Thats a bit bizzare..  but logging in as root is not necc. a bad thing..
Especially not to power your machine down.  That message generally means "dont
log in as root constantly" (I'll shut up now.. ;)

#  Second, I can't figure out exactly how I am supposed to setup my 'user'
#  account (the non-root account). Specifically, I don't have write
#  permissions in my home directory (because it was created by root). I tried
#  'chown' and that didn't seem to do it. I know this sounds pathetically
#  stupid, but, hey! I warned you in the subject line :)

try chown -R user:group /home/user

#  Last, for now, I tried to change my default shell to tcsh by doing several
#  things including alterring the password database ('chpass' or something),
#  but it kept saying something like "non-standard shell" and rejecting my
#  change (I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave). I altered the
#  /etc/csh.login file so that it launches tcsh, but that actually adds a
#  second level of shell so when I logout, I need to exit twice... suggestions?

add the full path of tcsh to /etc/shells.

---
Tim Rightnour  -  root@garbled.net
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