this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023

37 points (83.6% liked)

Linux

47299 readers

519 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml

nooter692@lemmy.ml

MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml

cypherpunks@lemmy.ml

cyclohexane@lemmy.ml

d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz

I just installed debian and i have many problems (feddit.rocks)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by mariah@feddit.rocks to c/linux@lemmy.ml

79 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My user account doesnt have sudo despite being in sudoers. I cant run new commands i have to execute the binary. Grub takes very long to load with "welcome to grub" message. I just wanted a stable distro as arch broke and currupted my external ssd

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] tal 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

My user account doesnt have sudo despite being in sudoers.

I don't know what behavior you are seeing.

Install sudo, add the user to the sudo group, and log out and log back in again (okay, technically you could just sg sudo as that user rather than logging him out, but group privileges are assigned at login, and it's probably easier to just log out).

https://wiki.debian.org/sudo

I cant run new commands i have to execute the binary.

Normally running a command does execute a binary. You mean that you have to fully-specify the path to the binary, that it's not in your PATH? Like, you're typing /bin/ls rather than ls?

It's probably easier for people to understand what's going on if you just paste the output you're seeing and indicate what it is that you expected to see.

[–] beirdobaggins@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

When installing Debian, it asks you for a root password. If you enter one then you will not be added to the sudo group automatically. If you skip entering a root password, you will be added to sudo.

I always enter a root password and then once in the installed OS switch to the root account with su - then add my self to sudo with usermod -aG sudo beirdo-baggins

Then reboot.

[–] mariah@feddit.rocks 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh. Maybe thats my issue

[–] mariah@feddit.rocks 4 points 11 months ago

It was

[–] terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Maybe they mean lacking wheel groups? Or not knowing how to invoke sudo with a specific user?

[–] tal 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

Debian's got a sudo group, not a wheel group.

EDIT: Oh, I see what you mean. Arch might use the wheel group and Debian the sudo group, and if he just copied his Arch sudoers file over his Debian one, it would reference the wheel group and wouldn't work.

googles

Yeah, Arch has wheel.

https://linuxopsys.com/topics/add-user-to-sudoers-in-arch-linux

EDIT2: I bet he tried to add his user account explicitly to /etc/sudoers rather than just adding the account to the sudo group and just got the syntax wrong in one way or another, as the syntax of sudoers isn't terribly intuitive.

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] kevin@mander.xyz 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Normally running a command does execute a binary.

I'm not certain, but I'm wondering if OP means that new programs don't automatically get a "desktop" app or whatever. I'm often annoyed when I have to manually create the file that lets me access software from the launch menu

[–] tal 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Offtopic, but I had no use for desktop files in general, as I launch stuff from the command line, but I finally discovered a wonderful use for them. Steam creates a desktop file for Steam games it installs. Steam itself is...not all that amazing as a launcher. Gives you the last five games launched in a contextual menu from a tray icon, and a list of games you can search through in the client interface after you bring up the window and move to the Library tab. However, you can set up rofi to use desktop files as completions (one sets it up to complete on "drun"), and then rofi can act as your Steam game launcher, which is great. I can just whack a keystroke to invoke rofi, and then type a few characters of the game I want and whack enter, and rofi will prioritize by last-invoked. Really nice not having to slog through the Steam interface.

[–] kevin@mander.xyz 2 points 11 months ago

That's basically how I use desktop files generally, the kde launch menu (similar to the old Windows "start"... I don't know what it's called) comes up when I tap super, and then I can start typing and find what I want to launch.

You can set that up to run custom scripts, but all desktop files are there by default.

[–] Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

In the Steam interface you should be able to sort by recently used, and hide anything that's not installed. Might make it easier to find your games :)

[–] tal 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah, I've used that, and the "lite" interface, but what I want is a fast, searchable list, no mouse involvement, just with a single key combination to bring up the search, and recent game stuff, and rofi with drun does all of that, which was pleasant.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] tvcvt@lemmy.ml 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It sounds like you’re seeing a few different issues here and it makes me wonder if there’s some hardware issue that’s causing some of this or if the installation is botched (though it’s be odd for that to hose two different distros.

Last time I looked Debian didn’t include sudo by default, so you’d have to install it first. To add yourself to the sudoers group, log in as root and run usermod -aG sudo mariah (assuming that’s your username). Then reboot (logging out your user should work too, but better be thorough).

Grub sometimes includes a timeout longer than I like and you can edit that in the /etc/default/grub file to something of your liking.

Not sure what you mean about the commands, but maybe it’s an issue with your $PATH.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] nobloat@lemmy.ml 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

When installing Debian, if you choose to enable a root account then sudo is not installed by default and your user isn't added to the sudo group. Next time try to opt for not enabling the root account to have a similar experience to other distros. Debian does this doe security reasons but it's annoying for users used to a certain way of doing things. Many distros just disable root account by default so you don't see that issue.

[–] neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh, is that what happens? Explains why I didn't have sudo, thought it was a bug lol.

[–] nik282000@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago

They tell you in the installer, I didn't read it either.

[–] silencer@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How does Arch breaks and corrupts an external ssd?

[–] mariah@feddit.rocks 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Beats me. I just started my windows single gpu passthrough vm and it froze so i rebooted and arch went into emergency mode. The ssd just wont mount. I had to remove it from fstab to boot

[–] russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't think it actually corrupted the SSD, perhaps a module is missing or such, and that's why it goes into emergency mode. Have you tried mounting the drive from say, a live usb?

[–] mariah@feddit.rocks 3 points 11 months ago

Yes Screenshot_20231013-053621 If i can get it working ill be so happy as i have 4000 music videos

[–] ruckblack@sh.itjust.works 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Arch will go into emergency mode whenever it can't mount a volume in fstab on boot. If the drive is formatted as NTFS, I've had this exact problem. I think it has to do with windows marking the drive as dirty. I didn't bother figuring out what the problem was, I just stopped trying to mount an NTFS drive on boot. Maybe you'd have better luck using the ntfs-3g driver?

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] tal 2 points 11 months ago (23 children)

Can you see the drive in Debian? Like, does it show up in lsblk output, which doesn't rely on there being anything on the drive? If not, it may have failed. Like, not something that Arch did.

load more comments (23 replies)

[–] AnokLola@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I think reinstalling Debian might be the best solution in this situation.

[–] digger@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago

I'd give LMDE a look. Debian under the hood, everything works, and really slick to boot.

[–] jasondj@ttrpg.network 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Nah Debian 12 is weird. I recently installed on a few systems and they all do the same — usermod isn’t in roots $PATH by default, and my user account wasn’t a sudoer by default.

I’ve added myself to sudo but I keep getting “kicked out” when I start a new shell. Have to newgrp sudo to be able to sudo again.

[–] tal 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I’ve added myself to sudo but I keep getting “kicked out” when I start a new shell.

Group permissions from the /etc/group file get assigned at login. Each process will inherit group memberships from its parent.

You can see them for a process (self being the current process) in:

$ grep ^Groups: /proc/self/status

The gids there correspond to the gids in /etc/group.

That's why the need to log out the user in question after adding the user to a group, unless you're gonna use sg or similar to add that gid and then have all your new processes started by that process that you just started with the new gid.

You'll see this with all user memberships in groups on Linux. It's not behavior specific to Debian or specific to membership in the wheel or sudo group.

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

On the Debian installer when it gets to entering the password when you create the user, you just skip the first password page (leave it empty) and enter your password on the next page. This adds you to the sudoers group. I've found this out the hard way.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] tal 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

For the GRUB delay...hmm. GRUB's pretty early in the boot process. I'm not totally sure what would add delay in Debian. Not a lot of per-distro difference there.

GRUB itself has a delay of a few seconds until it starts automatically booting Linux, time to give someone the option to choose something else. That delay is configurable and might vary on a per-distro basis, but that delay has the GRUB screen visible already. So I don't think it'd give the symptoms you describe.

I'd think that you'd have to be either doing BIOS stuff or something very early in the GRUB startup to be getting a delay before the GRUB screen is visible.

considers

Maybe your BIOS is waiting for the old boot drive to come up -- you said something about an external drive dying -- then timing out and looking through the list of remaining bootable drives and finding GRUB installed there? Maybe try going into BIOS and explicitly selecting the Debian boot drive as being the drive that you want to boot from?

[–] mariah@feddit.rocks 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The drive was never used as a boot 1. Only for media: videos, photos

[–] tal 2 points 11 months ago

All right. Hmm.

I'd still probably try booting up with the external drive disconnected -- should be an easy test -- and seeing if the pre-GRUB delay doesn't show up. If either the BIOS or GRUB is trying to talk to the drive and it's taking a while to respond because it's having problems, something which I have certainly seen many a (well, rotational) drive do, that might account for the delay.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago

I can recommend Linux Mint Debian Edition. It smoothes out a lot of the "sharp corners" of Debian and makes it more pleasant to use, IMO.

[–] FourThirteen@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What's with everyone recommending a different distro instead of trying to help the user in the thread?

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] Pantherina@feddit.de 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Seems you get good help here. I am curious, after coming from Arch, why did you take the old af Debian? Currently its not that bad, but it will simply get boring if all the new stuff of like 2 years is missing. Why not Fedora or Opensuse? Psst, Fedora Atomic /Ublue images may also be nice!

[–] mariah@feddit.rocks 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I just wanted something stable. I have celebral palsy and installing distros is very hard as i have bad motor control so i can barely use a mouse

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments