Everyone seems to say that u shouldn't logon as root in cos its easy to do damage, esp if ur new to linux. But when i need to configure a new distro after install i always have to use root as my normal user just gets stuff like 'permission denied" or "command not found" . this even happens with normal stuff like , 'ifconfig eth0 up'. do i need to grant the normal user more privelages or have i gone wrong somewhere. or am i missing the point!

sorry for such a dumb question but i'm confused.

It is always good practice to log in as a regular user, and supply the root password where necessary. Also, two great things you cna try are

1.) IN a console/command prompt u cna type

su -c 'what you want to run'
then you will be prompted for the root password so ... <enter password>

2.) also in console, kdesu to run a gui KDE program as root
then you will be prompted for the root password so ... <enter password>

hope that helps

thanks 4 the expo- its cool that u guys take the time to help us nubis out. i'll give ur sugeestions a try now.

thanks again

You ifconfig problem is that you don't have it in your path. You need to find ifconfig and add it to your PATH environment variable in .bash_profile etc... Anytime you get "command not found" it is usually not in your path. You will find that when you figure linux out you very rarely need to be root and when you do you will do it right.



Peace

It's not just a case of adding it to the PATH - you also need permissions to do it. Not any regular user (assuming you've got permissions set up correctly) can:

$ /sbin/some_executable

Otherwise it'd be pretty poor security. I'd advise you to look into sudo - you can use the NOPASSWD option to avoid having to enter your password in all the time.

There is a thingy called SUDO that you can use to give you regular account access to commands it normally cannot access, then there is SUID ( as root , chmod +s <filename> ), which lets a bin file ( executable ) run under permissions other than the person who started it.

Personally, I will log into the GUI (Gnome, KDE, etc. ) as a normal user, start a terminal session, then use "su" command to run as root in that window, and do all the configurating from there. If I need to started a graphical program as root in that console, for example, the Kate text editor, I will type "kate &" in the console so that the graphical program starts in the background, so that I can still type more commands in the console while it is running. If you don't to that, you will find the console will not respond until you close the program you started.

There ya go., that is my $.02

ho_10,


A regular user can run ifconfig to diplay the network settings you just can't change the network settings. No big security issue there.

That does not work for all distros! FOr example, logging in as root under a console or terminal is NOT sufficient for you to be able to open GUI programs from console as root. I have a whole topic about this issue!