Re: Newbie --Admin access problem on KDE... HELP!!
On Fri, 2005-09-09 at 00:45 -0400, Faithful John wrote:
> Hi all,
> I'm a relative newbie who's been using the debian sarge. I recently
> have been trying to install kubuntu on my friends laptop. She wants
> to use linux as a primary system (she doesn't like micro$oft).
> Anyway, when I was installing kubuntu off a disc, the network
> connections did not set up properly. Anyway, I have no connection to
> the internet on that laptop and so I am having lots of trouble
> updating the thing. I don't even have admin access. I know it's a
> bug with KDE, and it's been reported, but I can't make any sense of the advice
> people give. Either it doesn't seem to work, or there isn't enough
> information for a newbie to follow the instructions.
>
> When I try to do something to change the network settings, I can't
> seem to log in as the administrator to do that. I don't even know
> where to start to get it going, especially since I can't get admin
> access.
> Selam
To get admin access, you need to log in as root, for which you will need
the root password you set up when asked.
Since you talk of a bug in KDE, you would probably do better not to use
the graphical screen, so:
press <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<F1>
that should take you out of the graphical screen and display the first
virtual terminal (a black and white screen). If you don't see a login
prompt, press return a couple of times until it appears.
In response to the login prompt, enter "root"
In response to the password prompt, enter the root password you set up
Now type
ifconfig
which will show you what network connections there are. There should
always be one called "lo", which is the loopback interface (for the
machine to talk to itself. If that is the only one, you need to set up
the network connection; unfortunately, just what you need to do to
accomplish that depends on what went wrong.
To start with, you need a stanza in /etc/network/interfaces to describe
the connection. It will look something like this:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.18
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.14
The address and gateway addresses and the prefix of network and
broadcast will depend on your local setup. "address" is the address of
the machine you are setting up and "gateway" is the machine that is
connected to the internet. If you want to use DHCP to get an address
automatically, it will be different - sorry, I haven't got an example
here.
If you have that, try typing
ifup eth0
That may either work or show other errors - see how far you get.
Oliver Elphick
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