David Sumbler <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
<snip>
> I picked up the Ubuntu CDs, and thought I'd install it on a spare
> partition on my machine.
<snip>
> The "Update Notifier" on the Gnome toolbar tells me that there are
> 56 updates available, yet I can't get it to do anything useful.
> When I click on anything (such as "Install all updates" or "Show
> updates") either nothing whatsoever happens, or (depending on what I
> am trying to do) I get a box asking for my password. I put my user
> password in, and then it goes into doing-nothing-whatsoever mode.
>
> I even reinstalled everything, but got exactly the same result. Can
> someone give me an explanation of this?
Further to the above, and the several replies received, I have now
found time to investigate this further.
The problem was with the /etc/sudoers file. Ubuntu, supposedly, is
set up so that users can run admin commands via sudo. When I looked
at the /etc/sudoers file I found this:
*****
# /etc/sudoers
#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
#
# Host alias specification
# User alias specification
# Cmnd alias specification
# Defaults
Defaults !lecture,tty_tickets,!fqdn
# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
*****
I added the line:
david ALL=(ALL) ALL
and immediately everything worked as it is supposed to. I suppose I
could have used:
%users ALL=(ALL) ALL
Can somebody confirm that this is what should be present in the file,
or is there a better way of doing it? I have never bothered with sudo
before - I just use 'su' or log in as root.
I think that perhaps the problem arose because I did an "expert"
install of Ubuntu, since I wanted to be able to have control over the
partitioning of the HDD and the choice of partitions to be used.
During the installation process, I was surprised when I was asked for
a password for root, since I had read that Ubuntu, as installed,
doesn't have a root password. Perhaps that is true if you do a fully
automated install.
I have two further questions arising out of the above; if anybody can
provide me with answers I shall be very grateful:
1) Is it true that the Ubuntu installer can safely resize a Windows XP
partition, and will it do this on an automatic (non-"expert")
install?
2) I am used to KDE, and got in a terrible tangle with the menu system
in Gnome. When I entered "applications-all-users:///" in the
location bar in Nautilus, as suggested by the Gnome "Help", I was
told that it was an invalid location (I forget the exact error
message). I even tried it with "sudo nautilus" after I had amended
/etc/sudoers, but still with no success. Can anyone explain what
the problem might be?
David
--
david@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.manchester.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
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