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19990331: McIDAS-X & Solaris Intel at STC

>From: address@hidden
>Organization: St. Cloud State
>Keywords: 199903311557.IAA08543 McIDAS-X online docs

Alan,

>Just a note to let you know we are starting on the setup
>for mcidasx.

OK.  I will probably be doing the majority of the support for your
site as you transition to X from OS/2.

>As you know, ldm seems to be ok.  we are getting
>data into waldo via hobbes.
>
>I want to confirm the materials we should use to setup mcidasx
>
>I have been to your web site and printed the following;  all files 
>under the titles:
>
>      initial preparation
>
>      build and install
>
>      configuring mcidasx accounts
>
>Have I missed anything?

I have to say that I don't think that any part of the online docs are
ignorable.  It would be best if you started at the beginning of the
instructions and read through all of the documents that are accessible
either as links within the text or follow as <Next Page> links.  It
is much easier to follow the instructions online than to print out
the pages and then shuffle them.  This is the nature of documentation
written to be read online versus documentation written to be read
on hardcopy.

>From address@hidden  Wed Mar 31 14:40:46 1999

>Time to hold hands again.  We are setting up the users mcidas and mcadde.

OK, I'm ready.  By the way, please read this entire message before
trying to do the steps that I outline.  The reason?  I already logged
onto waldo and made the modifications as root.

I can warn you that when you go to setup the accounting information for
'mcadde' using Admintool you should NOT try to create its home
directory since its home directory will be 'mcidas' home directory.
What this means in practice is that you will have to uncheck a box in
the GUI that says something to the effect of "create home directory".
But I am getting ahead of the game.

>Noted that mcidas software will assume the home dir for user mcidas is 
>/home/mcidas so that is how I want to set the account up, but our solaris
>machine will not agree.

This is probably the same thing I ran into when configuring a Solaris
x86 system to take home for development.

>I have tried this (as root) using the admintool menu
>and also manually, but no success.  I guess the home dir does not have to be
>mcidas/home, but I would prefer being able to conform.

I would prefer that you do setup the 'mcidas' home directory as
/home/mcidas since it will make going through the online instructions
so much easier for you.

>Anyway, I note that /home is owned by root, but does not have write permission
>for anyone, not even the owner.

What you have run into is the following:

o /home is created for you automatically during the OS load
o upon startup the automounter is run IF/when the file /etc/auto_master
  exists
o the automounter was mounting /home

>When I try   chmod 755, I get

>   WARNING:  can't change home

>So, what makes home so special?

Nothing other than the automounter assumes control of all file systems
that it is managing.  The procedure to get around this is:

o become root
o cd to the /etc directory and rename auto_master:

  cd /etc
  mv auto_master auto_master-

The reason to rename auto_master is so that the automounter will not
start on boot up.  If you decide that you eventually want to automount
file systems later, then you will have to revisit this and configure
the entries in auto_master to tell the automounter to mount the file
systems you want.  Let's worry about that later...

o find the process ID of the automounter:

  ps -ear | grep autom

o kill the automount daemon

  kill <pid_found_above>

At this point, you can still not chmod the directory, but you can rename it:

mv /home /home-

(there is nothing special about the name it is changed to).

Finally, create a new /home/ directory and set its read/write/execute
permission:

  mkdir /home
  chmod 775 /home

>Now I understand why I cannot create /home/mcidas as the home dir for user
>mcidas.

Right, the thing that was there was basically in use and not available
to modify due to the automounter running.

>As to /home, I thought we had created it today with mkdir, but  doing
>ls -l shows /home was created on 9 March, but shows size of only 1.  I
>seem to recall that the size of even empty directories is  512  So,
>/home seems to be sort of special.

This is an automount thing.

>When I set up the disk partition, I seem to recall that /home was a
>file system that would be created by default, and that I refused that
>and put the entire disk into just 1 file system mounted off root (  / ).

Right again.

>Is this related to the problem I am having now, i.e. /home exists
>in some sort of perverted way that stems from what solaris wanted and a
>conflict with how the disk was partitioned?

This is not a big problem and is not caused by a disk partitioning
issue, so there is no need to worry.

>Aw, it is probably much simpler than that... remember the old saw
>"never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance" or
>something similar.

Exactly right.  The solution is a lot simplier.  See above.

>I have looked in the solaris documentation under
>users & home directory, but did not find anything to help, so we turn
>to you.

No problem, that's what we are here for.  This is "one of those things"
when setting up a new system.

>I guess the alternative is just to give user mcidas some other place
>for its home directory, but I will wait for your reply.

No, no.  We definitely want to set you up so that your work at keeping
things running in the future will be much easier.

OK.  I took the liberty of getting the login information to your
machine from Don.  I then followed the steps that I outlined above
for killing the automounter and recreating a new /home.  You should
now be able to create accounts for any user that you want.

>Say, do you have any information on some sort of  viagra software?
>supposed to be able to convert the floppy disk drive into a hard
>drive.

groan...

Tom