well, you didnt exactally tell me what happens when you actually run it as root... i would imagine that the permissions didnt propagate in the install, sometimes this doesnt happen like it should. you should be able to log in as root and take ownership, if that is what you are wanting to do. i guess i am not quite understanding. i m sorry, i just cant figure out about the suid thing. i am assuming that it is an alias thing, so running as your user might as well be like running as root, but what is a security issue so i dont do it. i am the only user of my system, yet my user is prohibited from nearly everything. you never know when a linux virus may spawn. then you are screwed if your user has root permissions. but like i said, most of those programs literally require root... not just user permissions, but root, especially for hardware access. say for instance, you moved a program from the /sbin folder to your home folder, and say you got all the symlinks right... then the permissions were changed, you could execute the program and run it. but say the program that you did that with needs to like mount the disc, or capture from firewire, and you hardware isnt setup with the permissions needed for your user.... you would get errors. i am not sure if this is what you are getting, but might be possible. anyway, for you first questions there, yes, basically. when you rebuild and make install, it should overwrite the old files scripts and permissions too. but i usually delete the directory that i am working in and untar the file again, to start over completely.