A Few Basic Linux Questions...
 

I'm new to linux, running mandrake 9.1 with KDE (dont know if that helps)I have a few questions though...

1. Is there anyway to give my user name permissions of the root username, or do i always have to log on as root to run commands?

3. Can i edit what is in the start applications menu, like at the top theres a recently accessed programs section which i dont want.

4. When i try to delete files from my swap drive, it says access denied... why is that? they arent windows system folders or files they are jpgs that i dont want on there.... normally they are hidden in windows but on linux they show...

I know its alot of questions but hopefully you guys can answer some...

thanks

1: never, never logon as root in graphical mode!; to install things required to be run as root, either use the super-user mode file manager (which i don't recommend either, but it is better than flatout logging in as root; or better yet, go into konsole, type su - followed by the root password and u should be set (yes u will have to type in commands to get things to install once u are in superuser in konsole

2(you called it 3): there is a menu editting program in the mandrake control center, go there and u should be able to take out the recently used programs menu

3(called 4): swap should be cleaned each time u reboot, if not, u can either reformat it or do a superuser command, setting permissions to those files in the swap drive, and delete them

1) in a well designed system you should rarely need to become root. if you absolutely must be root then su in a console.

4) by swap drive do you mean your windows drive? if yes then there could be two causes either it is ntfs or a permissions problem.

it isnt ntfs its a fat32 drive, and here is what is happening... i have my music folder in there, and part of windows downloads album art for wmp, well its hidden in windows but in linux it shows and there are so many of them, 1 for each mp3, its annoying so i just want to delete them...

how is it being mounted? assuming your distro set it up for you then there will be an entry in your /etc/fstab that looks something like:

/dev/windows_partition /mnt/windows vfat defaults,rw 0 0

you are interested in the fourth field it will have some options in it, probably not the ones ive put as i just guessed but anyway you want to add the option umask=000. this will allow every user on your system to read, write and execute things in this partition. i would personally make a group who have write access but thats a bit more difficult to set up. you will need to reboot or remount the filesystem whichever you prefer before the changes take effect.

this is what it says in fstab:

/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

any ideas?

umm none off the top of my head as ive just created myself a vfat filesystem, mounted it with umask=0 and all my users can read/write to it. what are the permissions of the file your trying to delete and the directory its in? also can root delete the file?