using chmod to change file permission
 

I'm using Mandrake 10 with KDE as the GUI. I want to allow all users to run hcfpciconfig, so change to su and run chmod and get the following output

[root@localhost sbin]# chmod +x hcfpciconfig -v
mode of `hcfpciconfig' changed to 0555 (r-xr-xr-x)
I then run ls and get
[root@localhost sbin]# ls -l hcfpciconfig
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 52699 Jul 16 03:32 hcfpciconfig*
which I think means that all users should be able to execute hcfpciconfig

But if I change back to an ordinary user, I get
[david@localhost sbin]$ ls -v hcfpciconfig
hcfpciconfig*
and can't run hcfpciconfig unless I change to su again...

What am I doing wrong...?

Re: using chmod to change file permission
 

what are you doing there??? why not use "-l" to see the permissions??

do you get some kinda error when you try to run the prog as a normal user??

are you specifying the path to it when running it as a normal user???

you should have to, as /usr/sbin shouldn't be in your normal user's path...

if you're gonna execute it as a normal user from the current directory without having it in your path you need to do a "./" before the executable, for example ./hcfpciconfig

Thanks - I need to run hcfpciconfig to avoid a "modem is busy' error when using kppp. The /usr/sbin directory is where the package installed to. Ive tried running it from the directory and by ./hcfpciconfig, still require to login as root to run it.

If it still doesn't work with the executable flag set for all users, then it probably needs root privileges to run. You need to set the setuid flag, I think it's chmod o+x . This will tell the system to start the program as if root started it. Do note that this is a security risk.

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Maksim Sipos