Yeah, I did exactly as you described and managed to create the folder and was able to write the file content, but when I got to trying to save it, Ctrl-X (or Ctrl-O) it refused to modify the file.  

It said it was complete with errors, and the error was that it hadn't done it.  A fairly liberal interpretation of 'complete', I felt.

Hah.

Sounds like a permissions thing.

Do a 'getfacl' on both /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/ and /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/autologin.conf. i.e.:
 

getfacl /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/

and

getfacl /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/autologin.conf

Check the owner and permissions. The directory you created and the file you made (if it exists) should both be owned by and writeable by root (i.e. 'w' should be present in the user permissions). Check that.

Edit: To be explicit, you should see exactly this (except my filename is different - doesn't matter, it's the same file:
 

d@k ~ :) getfacl /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/override.conf
getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/override.conf
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rw-
group::r--
other::r--

 

It didn't recognise 'getfacl' as a command, but on a whim I updated everything, rebooted yet again and it did let me write and save the file.  Unfortunately, it hasn't bypassed the login.  It's odd: there's no text when I open it in nano, but it's 4000-odd bytes in size, so there's something in it.  it there a command for just reading a file?

I'll have a root about, see if there's anything particular to Raspbian.

That's all very strange.

You can get the same info as with getfact with 'ls -l' (in the directory above what you want).

You can use 'cat' to just output what's in a file to the terminal.

cat /etc/blah/blah/whatever.conf

Did the /etc/systemd/ directory already exist? (I'm wondering whether Raspbian uses Systemd, google's not helping. You could run 'systemctl --version' to check, if it tells you stuff then it's there, if it errors then it's not).

In short, if Raspbian *is* using Systemd (and thus we're trying to autologin in the correct way) then I expect permissions are the problem since it sounds like it should work.

 

I'll have a root about.

Badumtsh

I'm simple and easy.

It's a bitterly ironic observation of the isolation to which so-called social technologies contribute, in artbollocks, anyway.

LOL no, you've misread it.  It says 'Self-management of Neck Pecker'.  I grew a penis on the side of my neck over the Christmas period and I'm struggling to come to terms with it.

I have spent three successive nights trying - unsuccessfully - to disable the screen time-out on Raspbian.  This should not be a three-night task, even for a thicko like me..

This is why Linux will always remain the province of a talented and passionate few.

There are two commends, one will work inside X, one will work on a virtual terminal. I'm not clear on which you're doing so it's difficult to help.
 
You're not exactly trying to do a typical thing here. You're booting from an SD card to a CLI on a super-stripped-down ARM-based £30 computer.

If you were running a normal consumer-level distro (Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Mint etc.)  with the default window manager you'd disable powersaving in exactly the same way you would in Windows - via the control panel (step 1, step 2).
 

Hey! :@

Sup G?

Sorry, I was really frustrated.  I have finally managed to sort it, though.  

The standard solution is to edit /etc/kbd/config and set BLANK_TIME=0  That didn't work because there's an old bug in /etc/init.d/kbd.  Once I had amended kbd, the instruction worked.

Now I'm struggling with autologin to the console.  After trying half a dozen different solutions, all to no effect, I'm working on jozy's, HERE, which looked promising at first.  I created autlogin.conf
  and filled it with the code
  Where pi is my login.

But that's where I get lost.  The  next instruction is:

 
First I had to install systemd.  But when I run that code now I get an error message "no such file or directory". Yet if I navigate to /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/ in the GUI I can see, open and read getty@tty1.service.  For good measure I tried:
  But I get an error message "Too many levels of symbolic links".

If I try to navigate to:
  It says "No such file or directory".

Is there any other way to 'enable' getty@tty1.service and will it make any odds if I do?  And can you point me in any other direction for autologging into the console?

Ant, I've got rid of the screen blanking but I still can't autologin to console (see my other recent post).  However I thought I'd try your autostart for Lonely anyway. One question before I try it: what does the instruction:
   do?

My script is a loop so if the lonely program dies for some reason it restarts automatically. The sleep 5 bit is to give it a 5 second break before restarting, just in case there's a fuckup and it goes into a massive loop.

sleep 1

would also be suitable.

>Sorry, I was really frustrated

I could tell (hug)

Yeah, you shouldn't install Systemd. There were two solutions earlier, one for systems with Systemd and one for those without. I don't know Raspbian and online documentation is poor so I'm guessing.

The non-Systemd solution should be this. But before you do it, check that /etc/inittab exists. If not, post here and we'll take it from there.

(Systemd is a new init system which is a fundamental part of the OS. Some distros have moved to it, some haven't yet. Debian moved to it a while back but it seems Raspbian hasn't caught up yet).

Edit: The root of the problem here is that automatically logging in involves manipulating the init system. And I have no idea what init system Raspbian uses.

Another edit: Ok, found something explicit. Follow this. Just the login bit, don't start LXDE. (It's the same solution as the previous link but this is specific to Raspbian
 

 (hug)

Unfortunately, Raspbian no longer uses Inittab. 

Ironically, up to September it seems the Raspbian configuration utility (raspi-config) had four login options: GUI requiring login, GUI automatically logged in as 'pi', Console requiring login, Console automatically logged in as 'pi'.  My current raspi-config has only three.  Guess which option's been chopped?

If I don't need systemd, can I uninstall it without borking what I have got working so far?  Is it doing any harm?

Brill, gotta go out to defend conceptual art on local radio (sigh), but when I get back I'll try installing it.  Will it matter that I can't yet autologin to the Raspbian console?