What is this "root" thing all about?
 

Microsoft was annoying me - i guess all of you had that...
So i'm now on Fedora Core 3 - seems like a reasonable distribution in a kind of enhanced windows 3.1 type way... (but don't tell the makers I said that)

I'm curious about "root": I dislike logging in as anything else because you have to open a command prompt and type "su" pretty much everytime you want to do anything. However logging in as root disallows some features such as screensavers and people seem to express concerns about security when running as root.

Logging in/out is a lengthy process on my bronze-age computer and no-one else uses it anyway; so my question is: is there a way of by-passing log in everytime so that Fedora always starts 1) with root priveliges 2) with the ability to run screensavers etc. and 3) securely?

Short answer: no.

Not so short answer: Yes and no.

Longer answer: You don't need to su to root to do much of anything, once you get your system configured. It really isn't that big a hassle.

There are ways of enabling the root user to do things a normal user would do, but I am unfamiliar with both Fedora and with the methods of doing so (they strike me as an opening for a major security breach, like the user always logging on as root. ;) )

And unless you really understand what root is, and how it works, and what the security implications are, I would advise never logging on as root. Even if you *do* understand it all, I advise logging on as root only as a last-ditch method to get something to work. If you are always logged in as root, you may as well be running Windows, since you will be wide open for any malicious attack. (If you are knowledgable and careful, you can ameliorate this, but still.... ;) )

Thanks;

So; now avoiding malicious attacks by not logging in as root...

I would like to be able to open, edit, rename, and delete files using file browser without starting the browser from a consonle: so I try and set the "owner" to me - which is disallowed, and I try and tick the "write" permission for others, but the tick disappears after a half second.

Secondly I would like to keep all settings constant for all users (i.e. same bookmarks in firefox etc.) rather than having to copy them across every time. Any ideas?

Thanks again.

For your first question: I assume you are talking about files elsewhere than your home directory, for which you therefore have to be root. I put a link on my desktop, to the command "kdesu konqueror", which opens a Konqueror file manager window for me, as root (I enter the PW in a popup box). If you use a different file manager, substitute it's name. If you are using Gnome, I believe the command would be "gsu nautilus", assuming nautilus is your file manager.

I'll need to think about the second one, for a bit. ;)

You could also look into SUDO. Do "man sudo" to read about it. You would then do

Alrighty then - so I log in as root or run browser as root in order to change ownership of files...

I have mounted my second hard drive to /d (which I have to do every boot unless I want to mess around with fstab) and want to be able to edit every file in there without logging in as root; however I cannot change ownership (not sure why) and if I set permissions I can only do one folder at a time [but there are over 500 folders...]

i was hoping i could (as in windows) do a search for all files on the drive and edit all their properties at once but this doesn't seem possible...

of course it's possible.

"man chmod" for recursive options on changing file modes

do some reading to understand permissions:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...ownership.html

If say you use KDE and you use Konqueor, you can open "Super-User Konqueor" from the K menu--I don't remember where from, but look in System Tools and System Utilites.

calcon

It sounds like you want to be able to easily edit files in another user's home directory. Correct? If not, then as Padma said, once your system is up and running (configured) you really wont have to use root very often if ever so there really is very little to fuss over. Otherwise you should only change the permissions of /home/otheruser'sdirectory so that you can access it too. It really is simple to do. You just have to read up about how to do that.

If you change the permissions/ownership for your whole system then, well, I think that your system wont functionn and, at the very least, you have rendered the root/normal user distinction pointless.