Beginner Debian Question(s)
I recently acquired a Roseapple Pi board, for which a system image based on Debian 8.1 "Jessie" is provided. This system image boots into an LXDE environment, with no option to boot to the console (i.e. the CLI without all the GUI stuff). I have no idea how to get it to boot to the console -- it doesn't seem to use GRUB(2) as the bootloader, so there is no menu option at boot. I tried to use sudo to get rid of lightdm, but was told that I'm not in the sudoers group, even after changing my user privileges to "Administrator". Naturally, I don't have a root password. Searching on Google generally suggests that it's way complicated now to just boot to console in Debian. That seems ridiculous. But then again, I don't understand anything about systemd or the "new" and "improved" way of doing things. Oh, and basic tools like lsusb don't seem to be installed by default. All this is exacerbated by the fact that Debian somehow doesn't recognize my wireless dongle (it uses an RTL 8192 chip), even though it's supposed to, and I have no ethernet connection to the net. I haven't been this frustrated by a linux distro in a long time. My idea of a good time is running dwm on a gentoo system, and LXDE looks like a bad knockoff of a premodern version of Windows. Any suggestions? (Apart from, "Drop the whole thing from a tall building" which has its attractions.) -- Peter King peter.king@utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-978-3311 ofc Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 CANADA http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/ ========================================================================= GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC 36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42
On Tue, 29 Dec 2015 21:36:01 -0500 Peter King <peter.king@utoronto.ca> wrote:
This system image boots into an LXDE environment, with no option to boot to the console (i.e. the CLI without all the GUI stuff). I have no idea how to get it to boot to the console -- it doesn't seem to use GRUB(2) as the bootloader, so there is no menu option at boot. I tried to use sudo to get rid of lightdm, but was told that I'm not in the sudoers group, even after changing my user privileges to "Administrator". Naturally, I don't have a root password.
Peter, Did you try editing /etc/inittab? You should see the lines... # Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6) id:4:initdefault: Change the 4 to a 3. The last time I played with Slackware, I changed the 3 to a 4. -- Howard Gibson hgibson@eol.ca howard.gibson@teledyneoptech.com jhowardgibson@gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 11:20:48PM -0500, Howard Gibson wrote:
Did you try editing /etc/inittab? You should see the lines...
There is no /etc/inittab. Nor does a find /etc/ -name "inittab" -print turn up anything. Drat. -- Peter King peter.king@utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-978-3311 ofc Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 CANADA http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/ ========================================================================= GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC 36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42
On Tue 29 Dec 2015 21:36 -0500, Peter King wrote:
I recently acquired a Roseapple Pi board, for which a system image based on Debian 8.1 "Jessie" is provided.
...
Searching on Google generally suggests that it's way complicated now to just boot to console in Debian. That seems ridiculous.
I think you may need to conquer this or "Drop the whole thing from a tall building" is probably your most viable option. Really gaining root would be the most important, but my hunch is that is required to boot into console.
All this is exacerbated by the fact that Debian somehow doesn't recognize my wireless dongle (it uses an RTL 8192 chip), even though it's supposed to, and I have no ethernet connection to the net.
Will require root and installing/building packages/drivers.
I haven't been this frustrated by a linux distro in a long time. My idea of a good time is running dwm on a gentoo system, and LXDE looks like a bad knockoff of a premodern version of Windows.
Contact the manufacturer. If you can't gain root via any sanctioned means you will need to research/implement/deploy local exploits. The other (possible) option is creating your own custom image where gaining root is trivial. But this may or may not be possible. Does the device require cryptographicaly signed images? The issue is that after using an OS where you get virtual unbounded control, it's mentally difficult to revert to one where you get ZERO control. Don't bother trying Android on a locked device. When using Linux it's still important to be careful of the hardware you choose.
I've now managed to boot to console, following a suggestion from Xiaoxiong Weng: inside /lib/systemd/system, change the current symlink default.target --> graphical-target to --> multi-user-target. That boots straight to a login prompt at the console. Now to figure out how to get root, or at least sudo... odd, because while it tells me the default user "linaro" is not in the sudoers group, in /etc/group "linaro" *is* listed as belonging to the sudo group. Hmmm. -- Peter King peter.king@utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-978-3311 ofc Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 CANADA http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/ ========================================================================= GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC 36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42
On 30/12/15 10:03 AM, Peter King wrote:
Now to figure out how to get root, or at least sudo... odd, because while it tells me the default user "linaro" is not in the sudoers group, in /etc/group "linaro" *is* listed as belonging to the sudo group. Hmmm.
Weird. So, if you run `groups` sudo is listed as one of the groups? Is the sudo package installed? (`dpkg --list | grep sudo`) Weird that there'd be a sudo group set up if the package wasn't installed. The other possibility is that /etc/sudoers has restrictions on what commands can actually be run with sudo. Though I'm not sure if whether or not it'd give you that error if that were the case...
On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 03:15:58PM -0500, Blaise Alleyne wrote:
On 30/12/15 10:03 AM, Peter King wrote:
Now to figure out how to get root, or at least sudo... odd, because while it tells me the default user "linaro" is not in the sudoers group, in /etc/group "linaro" *is* listed as belonging to the sudo group. Hmmm.
Weird. So, if you run `groups` sudo is listed as one of the groups?
Is the sudo package installed? (`dpkg --list | grep sudo`) Weird that there'd be a sudo group set up if the package wasn't installed.
Got it. There was a missing "%" in the sudoers file, so it wasn't seeing "sudo" as a group but as a user. Fixed it, and now I have sudo working. The last major hurdle is to try to connect to the internet, which is tricky because I only have wireless access here and the Roseapple Pi seems not to recognize my wireless dongle -- though again maybe I'm just clueless under Debian, since the dongle has a RealTek rtl8192 chip, and there are modules listed for that in /var/modules/: rtlwifi.ko, rtl8192c.ko, and rtl8192.cu. Loading them via modprobe I do get a note that another USB device has been registered, but nothing shows up with ip a or with iwconfig, so maybe not. Or maybe there is some intermediate step I have to take. Right now I'm reduced to downloading debian packages by hand, transferring them onto the SD card, and installing via dpkg -i <package>.deb. Not too efficient, but at least I now have iwconfig. Next up will be lsusb, to see whether the wireless dongle is recognized or not. -- Peter King peter.king@utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-978-3311 ofc Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 CANADA http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/ ========================================================================= GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC 36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42
On 30/12/15 04:22 PM, Peter King wrote:
On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 03:15:58PM -0500, Blaise Alleyne wrote:
On 30/12/15 10:03 AM, Peter King wrote:
Now to figure out how to get root, or at least sudo... odd, because while it tells me the default user "linaro" is not in the sudoers group, in /etc/group "linaro" *is* listed as belonging to the sudo group. Hmmm.
Weird. So, if you run `groups` sudo is listed as one of the groups?
Is the sudo package installed? (`dpkg --list | grep sudo`) Weird that there'd be a sudo group set up if the package wasn't installed.
Got it. There was a missing "%" in the sudoers file, so it wasn't seeing "sudo" as a group but as a user. Fixed it, and now I have sudo working.
Ah, great, glad that worked.
The last major hurdle is to try to connect to the internet, which is tricky because I only have wireless access here and the Roseapple Pi seems not to recognize my wireless dongle -- though again maybe I'm just clueless under Debian, since the dongle has a RealTek rtl8192 chip, and there are modules listed for that in /var/modules/: rtlwifi.ko, rtl8192c.ko, and rtl8192.cu. [...]
I'm not familiar with that particular wireless device, but from this page on the Debian wiki, it looks like it requires non-free drivers, and thus the Debian non-free repository. If you didn't specifically install those rtl files above from a download from the non-free repository, but rather they were installed by default, I'm imagine they're different drivers, not the non-free ones. Anyways, seems like you might find an answer here: https://wiki.debian.org/rtl819x Though, ThinkPenguin sells inexpensive wireless adapters that don't require non-free drivers: https://www.thinkpenguin.com/catalog/wireless-networking-gnulinux e.g. https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-gnu-li... https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-g-usb-adapter https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-dual-band-usb-adap... HTH Blaise
participants (4)
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Blaise Alleyne -
Howard Gibson -
Loui Chang -
Peter King