Hello everyone!
First real question(s) in this forum. I have just installed the brand new Slackware 12 on my old laptop (Pentium III 800Mhz, 128Mo RAM, 14Go HD). After a little difficulty when I had to find out I should pass some parameters to the kernel (noacpi I think), I finally get the stuff working.
I am not "totaly" new to Linux but still I considere myself as newbie. Each time I install linux I run into the same kind of troubles... Especially when I try to install packages: troubles with security policy, with the paths (I mean I don't know where to put the files), with the dependancies etc etc.
So I am not sure it's one question, it's many questions, here we go:
- Ok, I create a new user not to start X with root (good boy)
Then, with this user, I want to install Privoxy (I assume you know)
- So to do this, I download the sources and follow the instructions (I type make). But there, it appears the "make" cannot access some files it needs. And the instructions says, you should create a user and group named Privoxy specifically for the installation. Mmm ok strange but here we go. I create this using KUser, but then...? How am I supposed to know what files this "make" wants to access? Do I have to set a permission on each of these individual files specifically for this Privoxy user? I doubt that!? So what am I missing?
- Then I was stuck so I didn't try to install this anymore... but:
Now, when I open KUser with my non-root user, it says "cannot open /etc/shadow/ for reading". But it opens anyway the GUI, and I can change some settings like placing myself in another group (like the "bin" group).. I should not be able to do that as non-root, right? Did I already break everything?
- Ok so I would like to keep my system as secure as possible (of course). So when I install a new package, do I have to do it with "root" account? And if not, how?
- Also, because I don't want to manually install all the dependancies, I tried to install slackpkg which looks good... but on the ftp mirrors it seems there is no directory for Slackware-12 (that's what slackpkg says)!
- Then when I install a new package, it will put the binaries in /bin. What is the best way to give acces to my non-root user to some of the executable binaries? By setting the permissions directly on the binaries? Or creating some symbolic links somewhere? And how do I do if I want some user to be able to execute binaries, and some other not?
- Something else: I want to read a DVD with my non-root user. but when I double click on the DVD icon on the desktop, it says that a security policy prevent me from mounting the DVD... But my non-root user is part of the cdrom group.... what else do I have to do?
Ok, I stop there, I know that's a lot of questions but I think to have so much difficulties there is some basic concepts I don't understand. Please could you help me with that? Thanks if you read till there haha
on the Privoxy issue. The privoxy user/group is so that Privoxy can run as this user (for security reasons). You don't need to compile Privoxy as this user, you can compile it under whatever user account you want. To install it system-wide, you'll need to be root (this is the case with any package). All installed files should have root ownership, except IIRC the Privoxy logs directory (since it will be logging there while running as user/group privoxy). As for errors regarding missing files during your make, it's usually just a matter of finding-out what package provides said files and then compiling and/or installing it - Google is your friend.
