installed a little kde, it switched to it on the reboot, and most stuff is missing, no access to a shell of any kind

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 14 December 2009, Tom H wrote:
>>> But, now I have another problem.  I'm trying to install amanda, but no
>>> matter what I do to the user amanda using vim to fix /etc/sudoers and
>>> /etc/group, I cannot get into /home/amanda to actually do the
>>> installation, which for some portions of it requires a real root
>>> account.  Whats the best way to  fix that so I can actually do an 'su
>>> -'?
>
>I know NOTHING about amanda but if you really need root to install it
>and do not want to enable root, you can use "sudo su -" or "sudo -i"
>and you will be root until you type "exit" or do "ctrl-d".

Amanda is the Advanced Maryland Automatic Disk Archiver & hails back probably 
20 years, still in constant development.  New snapshots are released 2-4 
times a week.

Printed for reference, many many thanks. I didn't really want to create a 
root login, cuz the last time I did that and tried to remove it, the only way 
I could remove it was by a bare metal re-install.

sudo -i, I take it is the immortal option, won't time out in a few minutes?

How about the sudu su -?

My amanda install script is two part, and has to be fired off as root, and it 
immediately does an su amanda -c "./run2nd script" which configures and 
builds it, and when it returns with no errors then it does a make install as 
root, followed by a pretty complete check to make sure the system it just 
installed is sane.

It takes amanda about an hour to run through this system and important parts 
of the machine out in the shop, collecting up to 35GB of data, smunch that 
which can be smunched, and stash it all on another drive as a virtual tape.  
Its a very complete backup system that does it all automatically and 
completely hands off in the middle of the night.  As 'set it and forget it' a 
backup solution as there is.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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