[Fwd: FEISTY RESTARTS ALL ON ITS OWN!]

[Maurice Murphy]

Peter,

Many thanks!  Yes, I and my son are aware of the hazards of using Feisty 
Beta, but I am an intrepid explorer, having been a beta tester for the 
most recent version of Xandros Desktop.

I will give my son the appropriate instructions when I call him 
tonight.  I had 69 updates this morning, so I imagine his box will suck 
down a few more than that.  As you say, time to have a coffee or two.  I 
installed his box with his own username and password before the box was 
moved to Toronto, so not a problem there.

For me, Feisty Beta is just excellent, with only a few bugs that really 
affect my rather limited operations.  It has been a very positive 
experience switching from 6.10 to 7.04.

I assume that, provided we keep up with the updates, 7.04 Beta will 
actually become 7.04 final without any further action being required.  
Is my assumption correct?

Thanks again, Peter,

Maurice

Peter Whittaker wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-02-04 at 21:01 -0400, Maurice Murphy wrote:
>   
>> Checking appropriate bug reports, it appears that an upgrade to 
>> 2.6.20-11 may fix this problem.  How do I do this upgrade?   I will have 
>> to give detailed instructions to my son in TO.  Thanks, Maurice
>>     
>
> Ah, the dangers of installing beta software!
>
> Generally speaking, Ubuntu will detect that there are updates available.
>
> Tell your son to close all open applications and to look in the system
> status bar in the top right corner of the screen for a little orange
> icon with a white star in the centre. If it's there, there are updates
> available. He can click on that icon and the right things should happen.
>
> If the star isn't there, he can invoke update-manager directly: System,
> Gnome control centre, update manager (Or system, administration, update
> manager, if you configured the machine to use old style menus).
>
> The "right things" are that update-manager will display a list of
> applicable updates, your son will click "install updates", will be
> prompted for his password, and the updates will be applied (time for
> coffee, if there are a lot).
>
> When update-manager is done, it will indicate that his system is up to
> date, and, if the kernel was updated, a reboot will be suggested
> (circular arrow icon in the system status bar, where the star used to
> be).
>
> So far, so good, pretty easy to do.
>
> Now here's where things get tricky. As noted, update-manager will ask
> for his password. This is because update-manager needs administrative
> privileges to run, and it asks for his password to confirm that he wants
> to perform an administrative action.
>
> But not all users on a Linux system can invoke administrative actions by
> default. Usually, when Ubuntu is installed, it asks for a first userid,
> and it gives that first userid the ability to invoke administrative
> actions. Other users added afterwards generally do not have this
> privilege.
>
> So if you installed Ubuntu, used maurice as the first user, then set up
> an account for your son, sonOfMaurice won't have this privilege.
>
> The simplest way to solve this is to tell your son the userid and
> password you entered when you installed Ubuntu, and have him start a
> Gnome session with these. Then when he runs update-manager, he can enter
> your password again, and everything should be fine.
>
> Once the update is complete and he reboots, he can go back to logging in
> as sonOfMaurice; maurice will be his "privileged account".
>
> There are other ways of addressing the password problem, should it
> occur, but I won't go into detail, as this email would grow without
> bound. Let's burn that bridge if we get to it.
>
> Refer to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo for more on
> privileged access.
>
> pww
>
>   

-- 
I'm using Ubuntu Version 7.04...
ubuntu - linux for human beings <http://www.ubuntu.com>