Yeah. Behold Linux's security. =)

Most files can only be edited by root. su - will allow you to edit any files that your user cannot touch.

Any files in your user's directory must be owned by the user before said user can edit them.

You can fix this by doing...

chown [user] [file]

...as root.

Does that "chown" command add [user] to the list of users able to access the file, or change it so only they can?

i.e., if JOE owns file.txt, ROOT enters "chown JANE file.txt"

Can JOE still edit file.txt, or is it now JANE's file? Is there a way to let both of them edit it, but not anyone else?

chown is change ownership, jane would then own the file, as though they always have owned and always will own the file.

If you want certain people to be able to read/write a file then use groups.

So although root is more dangerous...being a user is a LOT more of a pain-in-the-ass. Almost uneccessarily if I am correct. Couldn't you just close the loose-ends in the security issue w/ root?
-Galen

How is it a pain in the ass being a user? Since you have the root password you can become root anytime you wish!

Like I said, use su - at the command line. You will then have root power.

It's better to be a user and su to root when you need to get something done.

If you are root all the time you are asking for trouble. I am a newb and had to learn the hard way. I made a typing mistake as root and deleted some things I didn't want to delete.
just my .02.
-Blair

Yea I did that the first day...I moved a 'usr' folder from one package to my 'usr' directory and thought replace was like the Windows replace, which means it jsut adds the stuff missing...but NOOO it deletes the whole USR folder and replaces it w/ a new folder that has the package files ONLY. weak. hehe. But I didnt mean just admin privelages...I mean, as user I could barely even open regular programs,etc. they were all locked. Any advice would be awesome!
-Galen

Well really, you'd have to look around and find out if there's a basic set of "things" that you'd normally need access to, to be able to "get on".

The whole principal of linux is the same (well pretty much) as unix. That's why linux is described as "unix like" or "desktop unix".

We are all aware that it's quite a bit more than that, but if you've had mainly experience of W98 and similar, then you've not so much been spoiled, but ruined. IT habits wise that is, because it's only been since xp (or NT as a commerical user - don't know about Me so ??) that you've started to have similar protections i.e. with XP home, when you install or just basic setup you'd automatically have root priviledges, whereas if you'd done a multi user setup, then the admin account has the root priviledges, and the user account can only do "user stuff".

So, you'd have to find out about whether there's a list of suggested stuff that you'd need to have access to, to work/play as user. It sort of becomes second nature after a while.

For instance, the gentoo docs suggest that when setting up user accounts, you do for an account for the user "john".

Don't follow the last bit (/bin/bash) someone might be able to explain that bit, and the -m -G bit's should be in the man page, but the other bit is saying to put user john into groups users, wheel and audio, users and audio are self explainatory, the wheel bit, thats important because without that, you can't do "su" commands.

If you open the editor you like and look at /etc/group, you should see the list of stuff that the users (user and root) can use and that some processes need to get access to as well.

Sorry if that doesn't seem to make sense, it does to me, but having reread it, I can't think of any clearer way to explain it.

regards

John