Linux help please..

[Atheist]

I have just installed Fedora 8 64bit. I've got some questions.

Question 1.
When Fedora first booted, it prompted me for a username and password...I didnt have a username (of course since it was freshly installed), but I did have a password (the root password you choose during install). I thought I had missed something vital during the install so I...*ashamed*...reinstalled. Anyhow, I finally understood that you had to enter root as username and the root-password as password.
Now, how is one supposed to know that? I was just lucky when I typed 'root' in there.. And also, should I keep signing in as root or what should be my next move? I reckon I should create a new user and sign in with it instead?

Question 2.
I need to update my graphics card. I have an ATI Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro.
There are 64 bit linux drivers available at ATI, but when I download it, all I get is some file which extension is .run that cant be opened. When I double-click it, this is what I get: (translated from swedish as good as I can)
Gedit couldnt identify the character coding.
Make sure you aren't trying to open a binary file.
Choose a character coding from the menu and try again.
Character coding: *Drop-down menu of character codings here.

How does one go about installing drivers like these?

Thanks.

[Hack]

Moved to Linux Development

[sunburnt]

I'm not sure how fedora works, but usually during install you are also prompted to create a non-root username and account. Logging in as root, especially in a graphical session, is a very bad idea -- it means that any program you run or any possible exploit has access to every part of the system and can do anything it wants.

With that said, your video installer will probably need to be run as root (to install system-wide files).

With regards to the .run file, there are a couple things to check:

1) it sounds like it's trying to view the file, not run it. Try right clicking and seeing if there's a run (or 'run in terminal' option).

2) the file may not have permission to be executed. Try looking at the file properties and make sure that it's executable.


Those are both the GUI way to do it. Here's what I would do --

mark as executable:

$ chmod +x YourInstaller.run

switch to root:

$ su
<enter your root password>

run the installer

# ./YourInstaller.run

return to your regular user account:

# exit

[Atheist]

Hey sunburnt! Thanks for the help! I went with the terminal way since i really want to learn how to use the terminal.
Now, I'm signed in as root because I haven't yet created a new user account, will do after posting this though.
What does the $ and # characters do? When I typed $ in front of chmod +x YourInstaller.run I got "Command not found". So I just entered it all in without either $ nor # and it seemed to work alright.

[sunburnt]

Yup -- sorry, the $ is usually what you'll see at the end of your prompt, so I threw it in there to indicate that you should type it at the terminal.

For example, here at work my terminal looks like this:

ledbettj@corgan:~/ $ <what I type goes here>

which means that I'm logged in as ledbettj on the machine 'corgan' in my home directory.

The # symbol is what you'll usually see at the end of the prompt when you log in as root:

root@corgan:/home/ledbettj/ # <what I type goes here>

The really don't mean anything, it just separates the command prompt from whatever it is that you type after it

Also, if you want to change to a non-root user, there should be users/groups menu somewhere where you can create a new user account and assign it permissions. On my system (which is not Fedora), it's under System->Administration->Users and Groups.

[Atheist]

Yup -- sorry, the $ is usually what you'll see at the end of your prompt, so I threw it in there to indicate that you should type it at the terminal.

For example, here at work my terminal looks like this:

ledbettj@corgan:~/ $ <what I type goes here>

which means that I'm logged in as ledbettj on the machine 'corgan' in my home directory.

The # symbol is what you'll usually see at the end of the prompt when you log in as root:

root@corgan:/home/ledbettj/ # <what I type goes here>

The really don't mean anything, it just separates the command prompt from whatever it is that you type after it

Also, if you want to change to a non-root user, there should be users/groups menu somewhere where you can create a new user account and assign it permissions. On my system (which is not Fedora), it's under System->Administration->Users and Groups.

Oh I see, thank you very much for that info. Ive created another account and will use that from now on
I suspect the driver installation might've gone wrong, Im trying to enable desktop effects... Before, it simply gave me a messagebox telling me that it couldnt enable desktop effects (prolly the cos of the lack of drivers), but now after installing the driver, the screen goes completely white. The cursor still shows though.

Perhaps I'll go to FedoraForums.org and embarrass myself a little there too

EDIT: I found this...do you reckon its worth a try?

[sunburnt]

A completely white screen probably means that you have some conflicting X modules loaded or a X configuration that doesn't play nice with desktop effects. These can be tweaked in your xorg.conf configuration file (usually /etc/X11/xorg.conf or some such). I don't know what you might need to change, but if you google for 'ATI xorg.conf compiz' you might find some good comments.

[Atheist]

A completely white screen probably means that you have some conflicting X modules loaded or a X configuration that doesn't play nice with desktop effects. These can be tweaked in your xorg.conf configuration file (usually /etc/X11/xorg.conf or some such). I don't know what you might need to change, but if you google for 'ATI xorg.conf compiz' you might find some good comments.

Alright thank you i'll do that But just one last thing before I do anything...a couple of hours ago I tried installing the drivers..i did something crazy so the only thing i saw when i booted Fedora was a strange black and white pattern all over the screen..there was nothing I could do so I had to reinstall the entire thing. What can I do if that happens again? Is there some kind of safe-mode i can choose upon booting?

[Lord Orwell]

just pointing this out: I believe that you were not supposed to type root-password as the root password.
Root is indeed the starting user account, but it defaults to no password, and the first time you enter one, you are setting the password.

[sunburnt]

Alright thank you i'll do that But just one last thing before I do anything...a couple of hours ago I tried installing the drivers..i did something crazy so the only thing i saw when i booted Fedora was a strange black and white pattern all over the screen..there was nothing I could do so I had to reinstall the entire thing. What can I do if that happens again? Is there some kind of safe-mode i can choose upon booting?

You can press control+alt+f1 to switch to a terminal, but if the X session is completely frozen, that probably wont work. The version of linux I use includes a 'recovery' option at the GRUB boot prompt (press any key when prompted to enter the grub menu, then choose the recovery option and hit enter), which boots you into a single user mode as the root user, from which you can make changes to the system and reboot. If Fedora doesn't have that option, you can do the same thing with a little work:

1. at the grub menu, press 'e' to edit the selected entry
2. add 'single' to the list of parameters
3. press 'b' to boot.

that should dump you into a terminal session, from which you can undo any changes you might have made or edit any offending files (such as the xorg.conf).

[wossname]

If you definitely don't want to boot to the GUI for the duration of the driver installation process then you can change the default runlevel that linux uses at startup. Its normally set to 5 (GUI) in most home-user setups but if you want to force the box to stay in terminal mode then use 3 instead.

The line you need to alter is in /etc/inittab (the lines that start with '#' symbol are comments)...

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
#   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
#   3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#
id:5:initdefault:

The line to change is highlighted in red, change that 5 to a 3 and reboot your machine. When you've finished installing you driver satisfactorily set it back to 5 again. I advise taking a backupof this file before you start meddling with it.

Oh, I almost forgot, to test your driver from terminal mode, you'll need the command startx which simply loads the GUI and the desktop.