help. made a mistake editing /etc/group
 

hello,

i made a stupid mistake while editing /etc/group. i deleted the 'console' entry...

what does it look like by default? so i can just type it back again. how will this affect my computer.

anyway,

thanks

mike

on my system:

This is what it looks like.

thank you very much. :)

i apologize for bothering you with my carelessness

No problem, you're welcome:-)

I always make a backup of any file I edit outside my home directory especially in '/etc'. For example if I were to edit '/etc/group', before editing it I would make a copy called '/etc/group.$USER-backup' or something like that. That way if I completely mess it up, I can just copy it back and start over.

wouldn't vim have created a backup anyways? /etc/group~

Yes, but I hate vim.

thanks for the tips.

I'm still using nano and I'm not sure if it automatically creates backups. Anyway, I'm backing files up manually before I edit them from now on. :)

Thanks for helping this linux/slackware newbie. :D

Agreed. I usually use nano or kedit to modify stuff.

even kedit makes a backup :P

And how do you use kedit as root ? (I did xhost+ once, but thats said to be a security hole)

nano and nedit, those are the only ones I use. vim is just ridiculous, I can't believe anyone likes it, but whatever.

:(

And forgive me for threadhijacking!

I usually run "xhost local:" (note the colon at the end) to enable any local user to use the X server. I'm not sure that's good from a security point of view, but it's definitely better than using "xhost +". After doing that, root should be able to use the X server too provided DISPLAY is set to ":0", for example.