Am 04.01.2011 15:53, schrieb Salvador Aguinaga:
> Hello,
>
> I a small foot-print SL installation that runs very well, but today I
> tried to make some changes at the 
> root level and I'm locked out of these privileges.

Did you really became root? Did you do a "su -" or how did you try to
become root?
>
> for example:  If I change to root, and try to change .bashrc it tells
> me that I can't change the file. that the file is readonly.

what does ls -l .basrc tell you? Does a "chmod u+w .bachrc" or chmod 700
.bashrc ( I assume its the .bashrc from /root -- elsewise you will might
need to do another chmod)  work?

> if I try to add a new user, my system tells me that I can't do that?
> useradd -c "Harp user" harpadmin
> useradd: cannot create directory /home/harpadmin

It appears from below, that the directory is already existing. From my
memory useradd dislike that -- but I might be wrong.

> I'm also trying to fix a terminal issue: the font is funky:
> Äroot§vaultaire ßÜ#

What does locales tell you? Did you recently change anything on system
or the way you login to (e.g. are you using putty or ssh from a
different system which might having a different charset set? this looks
a bit like UTF-8 vs. something else

>
> Lastly, I tried changing the password for user: harpuser, but the
> system tells me that I have no such user, here is my /home/ folder:
>
> Äroot§vaultaire homeÜ# ls
> harpuser  sluser

Does the user have an entry inside /etc/passwd?

Cheers,
Frank