Help, How do I change my desktop from being root?

[Rhythm]

All of the questions I've had in the past about backtrack 4 I've found except this one. You guys do a wonderful job at putting the needed info out there for others to learn from and I thank you for it. I've searched and searched on this topic and can't seem to find the issue resolved anywhere so I thought I would make my first post it and hope I don't get to many " you should search harder" comments. I'm looking to change my desktop from being root to just being my desktop. I remember backtrack 3 didn't have this issue but 4-pre and final seem to have the same thing happening. And I remember a friend pointing me to a "solution" and me having to reinstall backtrack 4 again. Thank again for such a wonderful flavor of linux!

[skinnypuppy]

Not sure what you are asking, but if you are looking to run BT4 other than root, you can type adduser from a terminal (man adduser for options) or from KDE you can go to System>Users and Groups and add a user.

[MosGuy]

I believe the OP is referring to changing the desktop path to i.e: /home/root/desktop. Lupin posted a method on his blog (near bottom): The Grey Corner: BackTrack 4 Final First Impressions . I've never had success changing it myself tho.

[lupin]

I believe the OP is referring to changing the desktop path to i.e: /home/root/desktop. Lupin posted a method on his blog (near bottom): The Grey Corner: BackTrack 4 Final First Impressions . I've never had success changing it myself tho.

Am going to write a proper HowTo on the forum here for this (creating a non root user). Keep in mind that the BackTrack Developers have designed BackTrack to be run as root, so you will need to be familiar with the process of using sudo, su, kdesu etc to escalate your privilege when running many of the tools which require root privilege.

Some things I didnt mention in my blog entry that will be in the final FAQ cover how to change to desktop background to the one used by root, how to get the same menu as root (the skel directory your new user has their home directory based on does not have the same menu structure as root) and how to modify menu entries that require root privilege.

If you have specific problems setting up a non root user using the general method described in that blog entry, mention them here and I will try and account for them in the HowTo I write.

[xX_Spiidey_Xx]

the only reason why i didn't include the root menus in my tutorial: xX_Spiidey_Xx's BT4 Tuts: Creating a privileged user in BackTrack 4 was because it didn't seem to make sense to me to have the backtrack menu available to non-root users, considering that they tend to require root privileges to run. things like x-chat though, are wise to run as a non-root user; in fact it will scream at you if you try to run it as root.

lupin and i had a short discussion about adding a privileged (aka "superuser") over pms some time ago, but i never got around to posting a tutorial in the howto section because i didn't bother to find the root menus :P

where lupin and i have gone different ways between our tutorials is adding privileges to your new user:
lupin has you add your user to the admin group, which is well and fine;
i have you add your user to the sudoers file.

the difference between the two is negligible, but i have a bad habit of forgetting to add all the groups to a user when doing a usermod -G, which will cause your user to lose privileges if you forget to keep admin in your list

as has been said many times in these forums - there's more than one way to skin a cat!
__________

anyway, the way to change root's desktop folder:

cd /root
mkdir desktop
kate .config/user-dirs.dir

look for this line:

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/"

and change it to:

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/desktop/"

save the file and restart the xserver (log out, or press [ctrl]+[alt]+[backspace])

and now your desktop will actually be a desktop directory, inside your home folder.

new tutorial from this info, posted here.

[MosGuy]

There's good addition info here. While we haven't heard what the OP is wanting to do. For me personally I have no trouble setting up extra user accounts. I added one for the odd application that doesn't like root such as VLC. Otherwise I always run using root.

@Spiidey: Thanks for the path change writeup, I suspect the path didn't get updated properly for some reason & caused issues. Your method is slightly different from what I tried previously. I'll certainly give it another shot.

[xX_Spiidey_Xx]

that should work for you. i like to test everything i do before i put it out there. if it doesn't (for whatever reason), we can look at finding a new solution for you.

[18436572]

and change it to: XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/desktop/"

The Clicky-Clicky method:
K Menu -> Settings -> System Administration -> Paths