Root and User: Separate but Equal
 

Hello. I was wondering how I can make everything that I do for one of my users be applied to root, or visaversa? Such as themes and setting for individual programs. Also, how can I apply all the settings already in place to root from a user? I am currently using slackware 10.2. Thank you for the help.

Also, if a mod could move this to the newbie section that would probably be more appropriate.

Firstly, I'm going to take a guess: I'm guessing that the reason you want this is that you run some of your applications (browser, mail client, office suite, ...) as root. If you haven't been told not to do that, let me tell you: don't do that.

One, as you've already experienced, it complicates configuration management. Two, it might cause security problems.

However, just because I think what you might do is the wrong thing doesn't mean I'm not going to try to help you.

Most configuration is stored in ~/.* (that is, files or directories beginning with a dot, residing in your home directory). For copying, you could just copy them from ~user to ~root. However, you also ask for transparency of updates.

I have three ideas. One is to set up a source repository (git, svn, cvs, ...) and do periodic three-way merges. This is probably not easy, and has the drawback that three-way merges don't always succeed. The other is to set up a bunch of symlinks in one of the home directories. This has the problem that new files aren't automatically symlinked. Also, you might need to muck about with permissions. The final idea is to make one home directory be a symlink to the other. This solves the problem with new files, keeps the problem with permissions, but then you don't have a seperate root home folder.

Hope you can find either of these useful.

How about you never run as root; and give that user sudo privileges. Then you can run commands as root from that user.

Okay. I'll take your word and not do it; thank you for telling me how however. I just wanted how root looks to stay consistant with how my main user looks. Where do people usually put source repositories?

:edit: nvm.