Some questions about UIDs, GIDs, urpmi and auto-update after installation of OMa 4.3

[Erik]

A few days ago I installed OMa 4.3 on an external drive, because I have good memories of Mandrake, Mandriva and Mageia. At the moment my system is Linux Mint XFCE, because my computer is ten years old. OMa looks beautiful with Plasm5. To my surprise my UID is 1001 and GID is 1006 instead of both being 1000.Why is this? It makes communication with other installations more difficult. The group 1006 has the name of “lusers” instead of being the same as my user name. Why is this?

I had a look at users and groups and found empty and unused non-system groups with GIDs 1002, 1003, 1004 and 1005. Why is this?

Dolphin is very restrictive when I want to use it as root. Very irritating. How can I get my freedom to use it as root in the same way as when I use it as user, without dolphin being patronizing?

When I open “discover” a slow updating process starts every time, even if I start the program twice, with less than a minute in between.

I tried to install Libreoffice 7.3.1 after downloading the rpm-version from libreoffice.org. I tried to install via “urpmi .rpm" as root. It did not work. Some program “glob” does not know the meaning of a "” in “urpmi *.rpm”. Why has it been made impossible to use standard conventions in bash? When I finally got it installed, it did not open, some file is missing, or has got an unexpected name. I do not know what is wrong. The rpm-version 2.6. installed correctly.

Normally flatpak programs update automatically, the flatpak version of Libreoffice however had to be updated manually today via “Discover”, to which I have added the flathub repository.

Questions, questions, questions. I do not know whether my exectations are wrong, or this new version has a few glitches.

Apart from these conundrums Openmandriva is a beautiful distro, My brother wants to install it instead of an older Rosalinux installation. For this he will need my help. This is why I hope your nswers to my questions will solve the problems.

Greetings

Erik

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Welcome @Erik to OpenMandriva and our forum.

[AngryPenguin]

@Erik

When I open “discover” a slow updating process starts every time, even if I start the program twice, with less than a minute in between.

Best way to update OpenMandriva is command line.
As example in terminal try:
sudo dnf clean all && dnf update
or
sudo dnf distro-sync

GUI programs like discover can cause some problems sometimes, so I do not recommend using them to update the system.
If you have to use the GUI, I recommend dnfdragora (installed by default) or dnfdrake (you have to install from repo).

@Erik

I tried to install Libreoffice 7.3.1

By default LibreOffice is installed in OpenMandriva (currently 7.3.0).
The best solution is to wait for LibreOffice to be updated from the system repository but if for some reason you absolutely need a newer version of LibreOffice then .rpm installer from libreoffice website should works fine - but we can’t guarantee given that the package comes from third parties and may not be compatible. You can check flatpak package that should works.

@Erik

Some program “glob” does not know the meaning of a " ” in “urpmi *.rpm”. Why has it been made impossible to use standard conventions in bash?

Because urpmi is no longer supported in OpenMandriva. Last version that support urpmi was OpenMandriva LX 3.X, From 4.0 version we switched from urpmi/rpm5 to new dnf/rpm4. And to install/remove/upgrade packages you can’t any longer use urpmi command.

@Erik

Normally flatpak programs update automatically, the flatpak version of Libreoffice however had to be updated manually today via “Discover”, to which I have added the flathub repository.

Flatpak is available in OpenMandriva but you need install and configure flathub repo manually.
For installing flatpak use
sudo dnf install flatpak
for adding flathub repo:
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

and flatpak packages can be updated via command line. Here is more details: Using Flatpak — Flatpak documentation

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Worth mentioning is that OpenMandriva is a small group of all part-time, unpaid, volunteers.

While OpenMandriva is a direct descendant of Mandriva there is not a goal to keep everything the same as it was in 2012 and earlier. Things in Linux change to fast and to much for that to be practical.

@AngryPenguin makes some good points in his post.

urpmi and drakx tools were dropped with release of OMLx 4.0 in 2019. Both were dropped because of code developers considered to old and out of date to maintain.

OpenMandriva package management is unique to OpenMandriva.

It may be helpful to have some documentation to refer to when you have technical problems (like how to use dnf):

OpenMandriva Wiki

OpenMandriva Forum Resources (User how to’s and tips)

Sometimes user can get quicker answers to questions on OpenMandriva IRC.

@Erik

Apart from these conundrums Openmandriva is a beautiful distro,

Thanks for the kind words.

@Erik

To my surprise my UID is 1001 and GID is 1006 instead of both being 1000.Why is this? It makes communication with other installations more difficult. The group 1006 has the name of “lusers” instead of being the same as my user name. Why is this?

I had a look at users and groups and found empty and unused non-system groups with GIDs 1002, 1003, 1004 and 1005. Why is this?

I do not know why OM developers do user and group id’s this way so I leave that for one of them to explain. This is a good question to ask at OpenMandriva IRC. Perhaps you could install OMLx with a “extra” user and after install create the user you want with the id #'s you want.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Edited: 2022-04-03 to show how to do with all copy and paste commands. Just remember to replace name “Happy User” and username happyu with what you want to use.

A workaround for the UID/GID issue. Install OMLx with a throw away user. For my example I used real name “Happy User” with user name happyu.

$ sudo useradd -c "Happy User" -u 1000 -g 1000 happyu

$ sudo usermod -a -G lp,wheel,audio,video,users,lpadmin,network,storage,sambashare happyu

$ sudo passwd happyu

Your will be asked to enter your new password for this user. Do that and reboot in to your new user and the result is:

$ id happyu
uid=1000(happyu) gid=1000(luser) groups=7(lp),10(wheel),81(audio),82(video),100(users),989(lpadmin),1003(network),1004(storage),1005(sambashare),1000(luser)

$ ls /home  
ben79  happyu  xguest

Screen-shot after logging in to new user happyu:

The group luser is not used for anything as far as I can tell. If you do not want to have group 1000 as luser there is a way to do that also:

$ sudo groupmod -n happyu luser

Now:

$ id
uid=1000(happyu) gid=1000(happyu) groups=1000(happyu),7(lp),10(wheel),81(audio),82(video),100(users),989(lpadmin),1003(network),1004(storage),1005(sambashare)

Note: OpenMandriva Lx includes the application KUser. I believe a user could do this with KUser if they wish.

Note: Mistakes can be corrected. If you create a user you decide you do not want there is the userdel command to delete a user. For any problems do an internet search of useradd, usermod, and userdel and feel the power of knowledge!

[Erik]

Thank you all for answering my questions so promptly, and even sending them as e-mails to me! Super!

/when my brother and I install OMLx on his computer I shall follow your advice and start with a dummy user make the necessary changes like removing the empty user groups and install a new user according to his wishes.

I have copied all your answers for later reference.

Again: thank you very much!

Erik

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

@Erik I hope that works well for you. If any problems ask and we will do our best to work through whatever.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Posted in another thread but more related to this thread:

no, I do not share one /home partition with two linux systems, in order tot avoid problems.

I spent a lot of time, two days, and two hard drives to learn and solve the problem on the drive where it matters.
On the second drive I installed a dummy user called “dummy” with UID:GID 1001:1006. I removed the phantom user groups between GID 1000 through 1005. Then I added the user it is all about with GID:UID 1000:1000 with th already existing home directory.

We do have users that also use Linux Mint. Your problems are new reporting so I have to believe this is my fault for still not understanding what you are trying to do. I admit I still do not understand what “It makes communication with other installations more difficult” means. I base this on my own experiences with using openSUSE or Manjaro alongside OMLx.

Anything other that OMLx 4.x is a different operating system. This includes other versions of OpenMandriva prior to OMLx 4.x or any Mandriva/Mandrake. However this actually applies only to configuration files not any stored data. (These config files are usually hidden files.) There would be no problem with reusing data directories within /home like Documents, Videos, ect.

Groups 1001 (vboxsf), 1003(network), 1004(storage), are not 1005(sambashare) are not phantoms. I suspect all most all users will need at least 1003(network) and 1004(storage). I have talked to an OM developer about this and he did say that they “probably” should not be numbered as they are. I do not know if it is possible to change those to different group number but will look in to that. I suspect we will look at this during development of OMLx 5.0.

As far as I have been able to tell group 1001 (luser) was added only to avoid an error messages when using useradd. This commit shows that:

• add default group ‘lusers’ with gid 1000 to avoid warnings from adduser when
  first adding

In none of my explanation am I trying to say anything is right or wrong. I just try to explain how things are in OMLx as best I can. If someone decides another Linux distro is better then for that user it is.

Note: I share data using separate /Data partitions. My method is not “perfect” necessarily and does require an awareness of how to set users and permissions for files and being disciplined about doing so. Also requires discipline about how you save files.

[mandian]

@Erik

On the second drive I installed a dummy user called “dummy” with UID:GID 1001:1006. I removed the phantom user groups between GID 1000 through 1005. Then I added the user it is all about with GID:UID 1000:1000 with th already existing home directory. It all worked, except that now I get this error:

Have you fixed “dummy” dir permission with the command

sudo chown -R 1000:1000 /path/of/dummy

?

@Erik

I seriously doubt to recommend to install OMa on his computer. He too has an old home directory.

If the problem is different distro use different UID or GID for user and you don’t need to use them with a dual boot machine all you need is to fix the perms of old home directory (and maybe some other few stuff as /var/spool/mail/dummy or something in /var/tmp, etc…) using the new UID/GID pairs in a similar way as following:

sudo chown 1000:1006 -R /your/home/full/path

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

@mandian solution may well be better than anything I have said on these issues.

[Erik]

Dear Mandian,

from the dummy user I removed the phantom groups as root, then I followed the recommendation from another post in this forum:

usermod -u 1000 ejvw
groupmod -g 1000 ejvw

and after this:

chown -R 1000:1000 /home/ejvw .

After this I added the new user “ejvw” but without creating a new home folder.

In my linited experience the easiest thing to do in case of different IDs is making the directories that are to be shared via e.g. NFS readable and writable by owner, group AND others. But this means losing a lot of security. In my case this does not matte much, since I live alone. But more important than such considerations is the fact that I do not feel that I own my own system, when it does not allow me to do things the way I want to do them.

Greetings

Erik

[mandian]

@Erik

I removed the phantom groups as roo

You may also only change the GID instead of remove the groups:

groupmod -g 500 lusers

and so on.

@Erik

then I followed the recommendation from another post in this forum

The solution you adopt works well but is a bit elaborate. I only suggest to you a quick solution in the case you don’t care what the GID of your user account is.

@Erik

In my linited experience the easiest thing to do in case of different IDs is making the directories that are to be shared via e.g. NFS readable and writable by owner, group AND others. But this means losing a lot of security. In my case this does not matte much, since I live alone.

In fact there are other ways than NFS if you don’t need a newtork solution.

@Erik

But more important than such considerations is the fact that I do not feel that I own my own system, when it does not allow me to do things the way I want to do them.

That is a bug a, most probably in a pach, hope it will be fixed in the release.

[Erik]

Dear Mandian,

@mandian

You may also only change the GID instead of remove the groups:
groupmod -g 500 lusers
and so on.

I know this. But in all things one does — or writes — there is a strong subjective elemenst, and also in my case a lack of knowledge of Linux. I do things according to my way of thinking or habits. I have several computers, all on linux, and want all my files on them with the same UID:GID and I want to be the owner of all my own files in the same way. Of course, I suppose, this can be done in several ways, but I can only do it the way I know of and understand.

In particular I want to be the owner of my own backup files. I achieved this by standardizing the ownership of all my files on all drives to 1000:1000. On my OMa drive I also opened the directory “/media/ejvw/” to all “all”, so that I do not need to use “media/root/” with a password. This way I get the feeling that all my files are my own. I do not doubt that there is an “official” way to do this without making my system vulnerable. But this is the only way that I can think of and understand.

Thank you for thinking with me, your help and advice. These are much appreciated. After all this, I know what my brother will be in for, if he decides to install OMa as successor of Rosalinux 9. And I shall be able to help him at the installation. He lives in Italy, which makes everyting a bit complicated when something goes wrong or is unexpoected. Now I know what to expect. Thank you, and the others in this forum; your help and promptness are wonderful!

Geetings

Erik