Monkey Linux

[Doogee]

Hey ive just installed monkey linux on my p100 (testbox thing) and i need to know a few things.

1 : how can i get rid of Xwindow, i thought it would be cool but all i would do is hand an xterm on it anyway so im going command only. it uses some old version with /etc/x386 or something like that

2 : how can i chage a users shell?

[Calum]

do you want to totally remove xwindows or just change it so xwindows doesn't automatically start? or do you just want a way to kill xwindows when it is running?

if the latter, use 'telinit 3' or possibly 'telinit 2' to get to runlevel 3 or 2 respectively, i am assuming that one of those runlevels will be set to full multiuser mode (meaning you can 'do stuff' but there's no X running unless you startx). try other runlevels if these don't work. viable options are 1,2,3,4 and 5 (or 0 and 6, which are shutdown and reboot respectively and S which is single user mode) i suspect that 3 or 2 are the ones you want though.
Once you have tried that out and found the right runlevel you want, and you've decided you want it to start that runlevel every time you start linux, you need to edit your /etc/inittab - this page seems quite good at showing this although it deals with editing your inittab so you go from a textual runlevel to a graphical one, and you want the other way round. anyway, follow the instructions and look for the line that says ''id:*:initdefault:' and put the runlevel number you want in where i put that star in.

as for the default shell for a user, try 'chsh' which seems to be the command to change my shell in SunOS4.1 (i can't check it in linux right now, i am at work).

hey btw, how is monkey linux? can it be installed on its own proper linux filesystem on its own partition?

[X11]

Calum, natrally anything can be installed to a hard disk if you try hard enough.

[Doogee]

I want to get rid of X completely, it already boots to text auto, but i wanna get rid of X totally and utterly. I wouldnt use it anyway, any ideas?

yeah the shell is tcsh, but i set it for bash on the user i made then i realised i wanna bugger around with tcsh so i wanna change it back to tcsh.

X11, monkey doesnt boot off a floppy you put the files on dos then use arj to uncompress them then it works off UMSDOS (is it called loopback interface or something?) the files are small enought to fit on 5 floppys but im a cheap ass so i did them all 1 at a time using 1 floppy disk back and forth.

Im not sure if it can be installed to its own ext2 File system partition but it can mount them etc, im gonna be buggering around with it, doing ports to it and stuff.

[Doogee]

chsh didnt work using root nor the normal user

[Calum]

does that mean it isn't installed? (do 'which chsh' to find out) this is probably the case, if so, then it's over to somebody else, since i'm not sure which config file you would edit that in.

I'd probably try out this monkey linux sometime if it looked like i might be able to put it on a better filesystem than UMSDOS, i will read through their site and see if they hint at this.

[Void Main]

Just change the shell for the user in the /etc/passwd file with an editor. That's all that "chsh" or "usermod" does anyway so if those commands do not exist do it manually with an editor. Whatever you do, do *not* change root's shell or your system will become fscked.

[Doogee]

lol sorry i just deleted the user and made the same one using the different shell.

Calum - note this project hasnt been worked for/updated for ages. Notice its got lots of stuff on the todo list, it says it has THE LATEST KERNEL (2.0.30 - i dont think so )
It has this weird way of installing extra stuff, like it says to make a directory called c:\linux\install then put the package there then boot monkey, i might burn the GCC addon to a cd along with some other shoit and try and compile a more recent kernel on it, what do yall think?

[Calum]

Just change the shell for the user in the /etc/passwd file with an editor. That's all that "chsh" or "usermod" does anyway so if those commands do not exist do it manually with an editor. Whatever you do, do *not* change root's shell or your system will become fscked.

ah! thanks void main! it annoys me when i can't remembe3r how to do something that i know i have actually done in the past! now i know, hopefully i won't forget again! - also, why should you not change the root shell? pardon me if this sounds dumb. ah! it is dumb, is it because of scripts that expect a specific shell? no that can't be it, the scripts should specify the shell they run in at the top of the script. ok i give up, why?

and doogee, i don't see that it offers any more than basiclinux does, and basiclinux is a continuing project, with 1.8 just been brought out and 2.0 due out very soon. it can also be installed on an ext2 filesystem using simple instructions available in the readmes and as soon as i can install it (my laptop with basiclinux has died) i will see how easy kernel recompilation might be (it doesn't come with kernel sources but hey, who cares et c)

[Void Main]

Regarding changing root's shell, there are differences in opinions on this. I am of the belief that if this is important to you then you are probably doing more things under root than what you should be doing and are picking up some bad habits. It is obviously possible to change the shell but chances are you will run into some sort of problem that will need to be dealt with down the road if you do because it was assumed that root was running under a specific shell. To me it's just not worth that hassle no matter how minor it may be.

You can do a google search for "changing root's shell" and you'll find people on both sides of the fence on this one. I can say earlier on in my UNIX career I would have been interested in changing root's shell to something that seems more powerful or more toward my normal shell of preference. The more experience I got in UNIX the less I actually needed to be root to do anything and the less important the default shell was to me. Besides, if you really want to use a different shell when you log in as root you can always type the name of the shell and bingo, now you are root running in your preferred shell.

So in summary to me it's just one of those things that I believe it to be good practice not to change root's shell. Just remember that "Void Main told you so" if you decide to go ahead and change it anyway.