Tweaks for Ultima, or at least Xfce
This entry is for my personal convenience. If anyone else finds it useful, that's a bonus. But I'll put the rest of this behind a cut.
So far, a text login and issuing startx seems to work out for the best.
A. Getting the terminal emulator to look good is easy. Just create the file ~/.Xresources and put this in it. The result is a black background with legible text.
ADDENDUM: No, don't put all that in it. It calls for things that aren't there and when NEdit (which needs to be installed) calls xterm for its spell checking, xterm will complain about not finding those things. Instead, only add:
XTerm*foreground: gray90
XTerm*background: black
B. Setting up things for shutdown or reboot by a non-root user from Xfce is a bit more involved (some info from here):
1. Set things so jed can be used to set up sudo... (unless you actually like vi...)
a. Become root and issue: visudo (no spaces!)
b. Scroll down to the line # Defaults specification
c. Type o
d. Add the lines:
Defaults env_editor
Defaults editor=/usr/bin/jed
e. Press ESCape.
f. Type ZZ
2. Set up sudo to allow user access
a. Type visudo (no spaces)
b. Find the line immediately after "# Uncomment to allow people in group wheel to run all commands"
c. Delete the # and the space after it so the result is:
%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
d. After the lines about doing the same thing (with the wheel group) but without password, add the following lines:
# Shutdown group - no password needed to shutdown
%shutdown ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/libexec/xfsm-shutdown-helper
3. Create the group and add the user(s) to it.
a. As root, issue the command: groupadd shutdown
b. Open the group file: jed /etc/group
c. Users that may use sudo (with their own password) can be added, with commas, to the wheel group.
d. Users that may shut down or reboot the machine from Xfce can be added to the shutdown group.
C. Dillo is good, it can be better.
1. Make Dillo easier on the eyes.
a. Find dillorc and edit it (change geometry of opening, set to tan background, disallow white backgrounds, etc.) OR skip to step b and edit only the copy if the settings are not to be system-wide.
b. Copy dillorc into /home/user/.dillo directory for whichever user. (If this is not done, Dillo's dialog may save a rather generic version in the local directory without all the nice settings of the original).
D. Set things so normal users can use USB.
1. Create a place to mount USB stuff
a. mkdir /mnt/usb
2. Aim USB at it, even for normal users.
a. Edit /etc/fstab
b. Add this line:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/usb auto defaults,users,noauto 0 0
Explanation: /dev/sda1 (or similar, depends on system) is where the system sees the hardware. /mnt/usb is the directory where the contents will appear when a USB device is mounted. "auto" is the filesystem - since USB devices can have different filesystem, let the machine figure things out and don't worry about it. "defaults" tells the system to handle things in the usual way (no special stuff going on), "users" lets anyone deal with the USB device, and "noauto" tells the system not to try to mount the device on boot (since it might not be there). The first 0 indicates that backup of this should not be done and the second 0 indicates that fsck (filesystem check) should not be done on this.
3. How to make use of all this.
a. Anyone can mount a USB system by connecting a USB device and issuing the command: mount /mnt/usb
b. The contents of the USB device will now appear in the /mnt/usb directory.
c. To disconnect the USB device:
_1. Exit the /mnt/usb directory if in it.
_2. Issue: umount /mnt/usb
_3. Only now is it safe to physically disconnect the USB device.