hi all,

one question please ...

i have slack 9.0 on my pc and i am the only user that ises my pc ... i have a little problem though ... this whole issue of root and normal user ... i know i am not supposed to work as root so i create a user account ... but whenever i wanna do something i must become root ... is there any advice suggestions answers ...

one other thing ... i know linux is multiuser and stuff hence the root and user thing ... is there a way to have it single user ???

thanx

There's not really any way around this, withouth using the root user all the time.

You should only need to become root to carry out specific admin tasks thought. What is it that you can't do as your normal user?

cheers

Jamie...

thanx for reply ... well mostly it has to do with my directories and files and stuff ...

if i create a user and give it primary group root will i be able to create dir and move file around the system ... reason y permission is such a big thing is that i am practically in front of my 24/7 thus i do alot of file working ... and being restricted like this on a single user pc isn't very nice i also like to customize thing on my pc thus wanting access to some options that only root have ect ect ect

since i am the only user and only connected to the internet thru LAN can i then use the "set user ID and set group ID" ?????

tell me ... i poked around in my files and noticed that in inittab has a single user option ... can that work for me ?

one other thing - y does slackware keep on hiding my other partitions ? exmple hidden win95 fat32 (lba) or my swap partition unknown 92 ???? how can i correct this ?

If you run all your programs as sUID/sGID root then you might as well login as root all the time - it has the same effect.

It sounds me to me like you need to do a lot of your work as root, there's nothing wrong with that. The reason that people advise you to not login as root all the time is that any mistake you make when running as root has far more of an impact on the system. Its also a security problem; say you download a program that sounds really great, then run it as root and it does something like attempt to delete all files it can you're going to loose the entire system - not just one user's files.

The box that I'm typing this on at the moment is one that I always log into as root. But its also a box that contains no important data, and isn't trusted by any machines that do contain anything important. This box is just my testing environment, which I need to be root to use easily and I'm not overly worried about killing it. However on the boxes that do have important data the only things I run as root are the things I really need to. It's purely a choice on your part. If you feel the risks of running everything as root is worth things being that bit easier then go ahead and do it, however be prepared for that horrible feeling when you run something like when you meant to run Single user mode is used for system maintanence, it starts the system without lots of network services running. This isn't what you want in this situation.

This isn't something I've ever come accross. At what point are they hidden.

cheers

Jamie...

well after the first install and reboot they r hidden ... and it is not just slack i notice doing it also suse and mandrake does the same thing ... it hides all my partitions including the swap partition ... i can start linux all nice and use my partitions ... but programs that work with stuff on that partitions has a problem cause according to them they r not there ... and i don't know whot to do to correct the problem ...

so far after i start my pc i go and manually cfdisk a unhide all of my partitions ...

thanx for the advice ... this pc is my workstation and i do mind if i loose my data cause i do my work on this pc ... i'll go thru the little bit of effort now and then and do stuff as root when it needs be ... guess i am still a bit toooo used to M$ and the freedom of the whole file system ... hehehehhehe

thanx again

What boot loader are you using? Grub/LILO? What did you use to create you partitions?

cheers

Jamie...

i use lilo but i have a boot manager cause i use windows for my games ... it is called system commander 2000

i used cfdisk to create my partitions

I would guess that its System Commander trying to be helpful by hiding partitions. You realise you can use LILO or Grub to boot Windows too yeah?

cheers

Jamie...

my experiance with lilo and grub is they never wanna boot my windows partition - it just give me a black screen when it is supposed to boot windows

i'll remove sc2k and see whot happens - as far as i remember this happened once without sc2k installed -

- and sc 2000 has some really neat features that i use ...

Make some boot disks though, or you'll probably not be able to get into linux to reinstalling lilo/grub.

cheers

Jamie...

i have lilo installed - but sc2k gives me a menu of os i wanna run - if i take sc2k away lilo will boot 1st ...