Hello All,

I am new to Linux, and am trying to setup a basic file server, but seem to be stuck with the editing of the allow.hosts file. I installed the latest Debian, and when I try to edit it, and then save, it says I dont have permissions.

As a sidenote, I dont mean to belittle linux or start a debate, I am behind the whole open source/free software thing, but every time I say to myself, "okay, time to give Linux another chance", I cant believe how difficult it is to do even the most simplist of tasks. No wonder MS is still on top. If only one could do it ALL from a GUI.

Anyway, I appologise for my little rant, I am determined to learn linux even though its frustrating at times.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Brian aka BigRussian63

You have to edit the file with root privileges. You can either do this from a command line (type su and enter the root password to become root, then edit the file with nano allow.hosts - assuming allow.hosts is the correct name, nano is a console text editor, you could use gedit or kate instead) or sometimes there's a little gui program that will let you "run as root" that will prompt for your root password.

What desktop are you using (KDE 4, KDE 3, gnome, XFCE, etc)? That would help us find the gui tool for you.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the tips.... I will let you know.

The reason Windows is on top is because most computers come from the store with Windows installed. If they came from the store with Solaris installed, Solaris would be on top.

Linux is not Windows.

Expecting it to act like Windows is asking for disappointment. Remember, also, that most persons, including me, have spent years learning how to use Windows so that Windows seemed to be "computing," when all it was was Windows.

Linux is not hard (actually, having been very very good with Windows, I find Linux easier than Windows now that I am pretty good at it), but it is different.

Here are some good resources for learning Linux.

A good basic intro to Linux. It's oriented to Ubuntu, but the information is solid. I wish I had known about it when I started with Linux five+ years ago. (I have found about dot com to be a good reference site for a lot of topics--their CSS tutorials are excellent.)

The Slackbook. It's Slackware-oriented, so it's very good on basics, such as permissions, file structure, and the like.

Garrels's Introduction to Linux. Detailed and very thorough.

I hear what you are saying, but the fact remains that to do even simple tasks one requires command line knowledge, it's not intuitive as it could be. Anyway, I dont wanna turn this into a flame war. I really appreciate your help. I will endevor this time to learn. :-)

No, we had enough of this flamewars. But as you will soon learn, when getting better in setting up your server, that it is most of the time faster and easier to use the commandline instead of the GUI.
Just my