[buug] hello

[Karen Hogoboom]

Thank you all for the nice intro to buug last Thursday.

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Ian Zimmerman <itz at buug.org> wrote:

>
> Karen> That is my new project for awhile then.  login [pam] -- I fail.
> Karen> I don't know why there has to be a daemon for login.
>
> Not a daemon.  This is the same process that becomes your shell after
> you log in.
>
>
So paraphrasing Wiki, a daemon is a process whose parent has terminated
(possibly by its own hand) and so is adopted by init, which is PID 1, and
generally runs in background.  Is that right?

When I log in as karenh rather than root, I see that "login [pam] (login)"
is PID 1115 under root, and then -sh is PID 1116 under karenh, so I guess
that login made me a shell.  I also see that after I do startx, the first of
the three windows that twm creates for me has the title login, and the other
two have xterm as their title.

CTRL-middle mouse button in a window gives me VT options, such as display
scrollbar.  Left clicky on upper left corner minimizes the window to a small
icon.

Left clicky on background does give me twm options and allows me to open a
new xterm.


Now I remember what I wanted to ask about the history of X Window.  From a
little bit of reading, it seemed like the concept of server and client were
reversed from how we think of client and server software now.  If I
understand, there are three kinds of X pieces.  X Server, X Window Manager,
X clients.  Imagine we have three computers.  One is in Boston, Mass, and
two are in Berkeley, CA,   It was originally envisioned that the X Server
would run in Berkeley and the X Window Manager would run in Boston?


Karen> -csh -- I fail. Looks like a vararg or parameter or flag, not a
> Karen> process.
>
> I said high level :)  You don't need to understand the flags.  Just what
> it is and why it is running.  This is your shell (which used to be a
> login process).  The leading dash is just a trick to make it know it is
> in fact a login shell, and not just any random interactive shell that
> you started by typing "csh".  But that is a detail that can wait for
> much later.
>
> Karen> /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/startx -- I sort of get this, but am
> Karen> wondering I need to be logged in as root if this computer is its
> Karen> own server, window manager with its own clients.
>
> No, because the X server is setuid root.  setuid is kind of important
> concept, maybe google it.
>

I read about it many years ago.  It is the damage with chmod that my IT guy
at the time would never want me to do.


> hth
> --
> Ian Zimmerman <itz at buug.org>
> gpg public key: 1024D/C6FF61AD
> fingerprint: 66DC D68F 5C1B 4D71 2EE5  BD03 8A00 786C C6FF 61AD
> Ham is for reading, not for eating.
>



-- 
http://www.linkedin.com/in/karenlhogoboom
http://www.facebook.com/klhogoboom
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