A little help required

[pmk]

I have just loaded raspbian using the installer on my 2 pi's but I have a few issues:

1) I can not use 'sudo' but have to log in as 'su' to do anything.

2) I can not find a desktop environment, 'startx' can not be found.

3) 'rpi-update' seems to work ok but throws out a few errors when it updates. Reboots ok tho.

Any help would be appreciated before I start build my apps on top of it.

Ta

[bredman]

Did you create a new user, or are you using the normal username "pi"?

[RaTTuS]

what errors?
does
cat /var/log/syslog
say anything intersting about errors

[pmk]

Did you create a new user, or are you using the normal username "pi"?

I created a new user and not the 'pi' one.

[pmk]

what errors?
does
cat /var/log/syslog
say anything intersting about errors

It is a very very long file but no information of errors in there.

Any idea where the startx is or do i need the load in new desktop ?

[Nigel Day]

Did you create a new user, or are you using the normal username "pi"?

I created a new user and not the 'pi' one.

To allow your new user to use sudo, you will have to update the file /etc/group. Look for the sudo line, and add a comma and your new username at the end.

To allow your new user to use sudo without haveing to quote a password, you will also need to edit the file sudousers, either alter the last line (which currently contains "pi ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL") to replace the word pi with your user name, or add in a similar line using your user name. The latter approach means that the user pi can still use sudo without using a password, which you may (or may not) think a good thing.

[bredman]

Your problems are probably caused by not creating the new user correctly.

The correct method to define a new user is described at
http://elinux.org/RPi_Beginners#Create_ ... privileges

[pmk]

Thanks for the help, any idea where startx is ??

[bredman]

Thanks for the help, any idea where startx is ??

Try the command
/usr/bin/startx

If this works, it means that your launch paths are not set correctly.

[rpural]

There's more to a user than just a name. Do an "ls -al /home/pi" to see the hidden files there. I'm not sitting at mine, but a .profile or .bashrc may contain commands that set your $PATH variable which controls where you find programs, and not having this set would be why you aren't finding startx. Copy the .profile or .bashrc file from /home/pi to your home directory, log out and log back in, then try again. Thare are also many control files for the x-windows environment kept in hidden files, so you may not get the screen you're expecting....

Also, after creating your own userid, did you change the password for pi and root? If not, you've left a huge security hole in your system that anyone could come along and take advantage of...

[shalo]

I have just loaded raspbian using the installer on my 2 pi's but I have a few issues:

1) I can not use 'sudo' but have to log in as 'su' to do anything.

2) I can not find a desktop environment, 'startx' can not be found.

3) 'rpi-update' seems to work ok but throws out a few errors when it updates. Reboots ok tho.

Any help would be appreciated before I start build my apps on top of it.

Ta

Just to clarify, because I suspect some/all of the replies here missed it. Are you using the installer as you have stated, or an image? My suspicion would be you just need to apt-get install lxde or whatever. (Also ensure the user is setup, per advice in this thread).

Or use an image file, the official one is probably going to be the simplest, especially if you require help in future.