[fpc-pascal] Methods for autoupdating fpc programs?

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Bo Berglund wrote:
> On Sun, 04 Oct 2015 00:36:09 +0200, Bo Berglund
> <bo.berglund at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> But if I open a terminal from the menu in the VNC window it shows it
>> is running as root...
>>
>> I have to check with the RPi forum on this VNC problem.
> 
> I have now found out the reason for the VNC shell running as root and
> I have managed to get it half way solved...
> 
> It had to do with how tightvncserver was initialized following
> installation and how the vncboot script was written for starting vnc
> server on boot. The tutorial I used for freepascal and lazarus on pi
> had a section on vnc access too so I used that when installing rather
> than the official documentation tutorial on the pi website.
> 
> In any case I have now found it and tried to modify the installation
> and vncboot script so that the VNC shell runs as pi. And this sems to
> have succeeded.
> But in the process ALL of the start menu programs in the VNC shell
> disappeared! I now only have Run.., which does nothing, and Shutdown.
> Plus the file manager and terminal on separate start icons. These two
> show that the shell now runs as user pi.
> 
> But I have no idea how to get to Lazarus anymore since it disappeared
> from the Menu. And I am not that used to Linux that I can fix this.
> Sigh....
> Maybe I have to scrap the SDcard and start over (another day lost).

This is not the place to discuss this but hopefully Management will 
allow a single message through, after that we will need to adjourn to 
fpc-other.

There are three ways of running VNC. The first- and most common- is to 
start it up to look at an already-running session for remote support 
etc., which is probably what you've done.

The other two start it up listening to a TCP port, one way is to use 
inetd.conf and the other is to use inittab /but/ this latter doesn't 
work on Jessie or later (there might be an equivalent way to plumb it 
into systemd but I've not managed yet). Either of these ways will start 
up a new copy of the system's default display manager (lightdm or 
whatever), and at that point you can log in as an arbitrary user with 
your usual desktop... it is probably this that you're missing.

Otherwise, AS A NUMBER OF PEOPLE INCLUDING MYSELF HAVE TOLD YOU 
REPEATEDLY, you can quite simply run Lazarus- and I mean Lazarus, 
complete with its GUI stuff- over SSH. This is by far the simplest way, 
although as I've said elsewhere there can be a performance impact.

If you want to continue this, please start a thread in either fpc-other 
or lazarus-other asking about running Lazarus remotely.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]