FreeBSD 10.2 Xfce su -l error

F

FreeBSDer009

I recently installed Xfce version 4 I think in FreeBSD 10.2 and installed xorg, but when I startx and try to elevate to root using su -l I get the following error message no matter how many times I try or if I get the password correct:

Screenshot from 2015-12-29 13:02:56 cropped.png


Now what should I do? It's almost as bad as the situation in the first Jurassic Park when Samual L. Jackson as Ray Arnold is trying to undo the hack by Wayne Wright as Dennis Nedry and all you hear is ah ah ah you didn't say the magic word ah ah ah... ah ah ah.
 
FreeBSDer009 said:
This worked, but grep jdoe /etc/group didn't
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FreeBSDer009 said:
I recently installed Xfce version 4 I think in FreeBSD 10.2 and installed xorg, but when I startx and try to elevate to root using su -l I get the following error message no matter how many times I try or if I get the password correct:

View attachment 2877

Now what should I do? It's almost as bad as the situation in the first Jurassic Park when Samual L. Jackson as Ray Arnold is trying to undo the hack by Wayne Wright as Dennis Nedry and all you hear is ah ah ah you didn't say the magic word ah ah ah... ah ah ah.
Click to expand...

After checking to see if I was part of the wheel group as suggested I confirmed that I was and I added the suggested line to the ~/.xinitrc as suggested in the documentation and created the ~/.xsession file while adding the suggested line in the documentation, but none of that helped and BSD still only starts xterm when using startx(1) and doesn't start Xfce4 on startup either if it was supposed to after creating the ~/.xsession file with the suggested lines. I checked the log file and it only show the last five lines, which are the "logfile turned over due to size>100K" and "BAD SU", so I have no idea what the problem could be or where to find a hint as to what it could be now.
 
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FreeBSDer009 said:
After checking to see if I was part of the wheel group as suggested I confirmed that I was and I added the suggested line to the ~/.xinitrc as suggested in the documentation and created the ~/.xsession file while adding the suggested line in the documentation, but none of that helped and BSD still only starts xterm when using startx and doesn't start xfce on startup either if it was supposed to after creating the ~/.xsession file with the suggested lines. I checked the log file and it only show the last five lines, which are the "logfile turned over due to size>100K" and "BAD SU", so I have no idea what the problem could be or where to find a hint as to what it could be now.
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I tried this command pkg upgrade -f to make sure everything was up to date, but that still didn't help.
 
The equivalent way to startx for Xfce is startxfce4.
BTW, startx or startxfce4 should be run as your user.
 
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tingo said:
The equivalent way to startx for Xfce is startxfce4.
BTW, startx or startxfce4 should be run as your user.
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That worked. Finally I can use FreeBSD from one of the desktop interfaces. Thanks. Here's a screenshot below showing the desktop:

Screenshot from 2015-12-30 21:58:09 cropped and sensored.png
 
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FreeBSDer009 said:
My user already is. I did this manually for this install by using a similiar command to this: pw user add jdoe -G wheel.
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Just a note, this command isn't entirely correct. What this does is set the group to wheel and remove all other group memberships. That's usually not what you want.

This adds the group to a user (without removing any existing group memberships):
pw groupmod wheel -m jdoe

To remove the group membership:
pw groupmod wheel -d jdoe
 
SirDice said:
Just a note, this command isn't entirely correct. What this does is set the group to wheel and remove all other group memberships. That's usually not what you want.

This adds the group to a user (without removing any existing group memberships):
pw groupmod wheel -m jdoe

To remove the group membership:
pw groupmod wheel -d jdoe
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Thanks, but how do I add the group memberships back though?

This explains why I can't elevate to root in terminal with the su -l command.
 
FreeBSDer009 said:
Thanks, but how do I add the group memberships back though?
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Presuming there is a group for your user that is the same name as your user use: pw groupmod {username} -m {username}. If there is not such a group, then you will need to create the group, pw groupadd {username} and add your user to it with the previous command. Or do it all in one line with pw groupadd {username} -M {username}.

FTR, the pw(8) man page covers all of this.
 
UnixRocks said:
Presuming there is a group for your user that is the same name as your user use: pw groupmod {username} -m {username}. If there is not such a group, then you will need to create the group, pw groupadd {username} and add your user to it with the previous command. Or do it all in one line with pw groupadd {username} -M {username}.

FTR, the pw(8) man page covers all of this.
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I just started over from the beginning by installing FreeBSD 10.2 today and then backing up at that point. Then I attempted to install each desktop from after the point of installing the OS and None of them would install or work for me except KDE and MATE, which still won't let me login. I can't find an answer as to why none them will allow me to install them or login either. I'm getting errors while using pkg about the package not being available though, but I don't know how to fix this. Please help if you can and if it helps I will post the code by ssh from terminal into the VM's for each thread corresponding to the respective Desktop Environment it is related to.
I don't see any noticeable error in /var/log/messages and /var/log/Xorg.0.log either, so I'm not sure what to do now. I will post the output if requested. Also I even wrote instruction for all four of these, so I won't make a mistake this time and it didn't help.
 
FreeBSDer009, you have 3 different threads for an issue(s) with desktop environments that is/are likely the same or closely related. Let's step back, focus on one desktop environment in one thread first and work with that until you get the issue(s) fixed. Once the issues are fixed it is likely the problems with the other desktop environments will be fixed as well. Since x11-wm/xfce4 is the desktop environment you're having problems with in this thread, why don't we start here with that? In short, don't attempt to install any other desktop environment until you get Xfce4 working for you. In the mean time, don't add to your other two threads until the issues in this one are solved.

I don't remember you mentioning it in any of your other threads, but if you haven't already, I would encourage you to read through the FreeBSD Handbook to have a bit better understanding beforehand of how to install and configure your system. If your coming from Windows, it's a bit of a learning curve for new users and the Handbook is invaluable in that case.

To get back on topic, it's not clear but after reading through all your threads, it looks like trying to do everything as the root user including starting the desktop environments. You should have had the option to create a regular user in bsdinstall(8) when installing the system. root should only be used for system installation and administration, nothing else. Desktop environments should only be started by a regular user. Just to be clear here, have you created a regular user?

Also, after installing x11-wm/xfce, you should follow the pkg(8) message printed by pkg(8) after it is installed. If Xfce4 is already installed, you can get that information by running pkg info -D xfce4
 
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