30th July 2004, 9:24 AM
DJ, type <i>su</i> at a command prompt to switch to root, and then enter the root passwd. Think of it as SuperUser. Just don't forget to logout of root as soon as you can, because it's not good to play with things as root when you are new.
If you don't have permissions for stuff, you need to use <i>chmod</i>. I don't know how much about Unix filesystems you know, so if I'm repeating stuff ignore me. They have 3 categories of users: User (yourself), group (people who you choose to give special permissions to), and other (everyone else). You can give read, write, and execute access to everything for each individual user category. And of course, it's done with binary bits!
Permissions on a file will look like this:
rwx r-x r--
The first set of numbers represents user access, the second is group, and the third is world. So this means that You have read, write, and execute permission on this file, the group has read and execute, but not write, and everybody else has read only. Make sense?
Just look at one category for a minute, say User. Each permission is either on or off, so think of it as a 1 or 0. For this example, User has all permissions, so instead of rwx it could look like 111, emaning all on. The Group looks like 101 and Other is 100. If you know binary, you'll see these are binary numbers 7, 5, and 4. So to set these permissions for this file you would type
<i>chmod 754 filename.txt</i>
chmod is the command name, 754 is the numbers representing the permissions, and filename is of course the file you want to change the permssions on. There are other ways to do it, but I like this way because the binary makes sense to me. I think you can also do something like:
<i>chmod u+rwx g+rx-w o+r-wx filename.txt</i>
Which does the same thing, by adding read, write, and execute permissions to user, adding r and x to group, and so on. I don't guarantee that the syntax is perfect on that, because I never use it, but it will get you started!
Now, I know you said you are staying away from command prompt for now, so all I told you won't help. I imagine you can change permission on files in the GUI by right-clicking or something, but I have only used the GUI a little bit. When I learned Linux, they threw us straight into textland.
I highly recommend you start learning how to navigate by command prompt. I bet you know DOS, so it will be an easy transition. Linux is much, much, MUCH better to work with than DOS. I'm sure you will find plenty of suggestions of good commands for beginners. Learn about pipes, and redirection, and all that fun stuff. Learn how to change your prompt to show different stuff, and try with some basic shell scripting. It's fun stuff!
Don't wait until after you have everything set up from the GUI, because first of all I don't think you CAN set everything up from the GUI. :) And don't even worry too much about getting everything set up. That's one of the quirks about Linux, like it or not. Nothing is every finished. It's good, because no matter what program you are looking at, whether it is a Windows Emu or the Kernel itself, chances are someone is always working hard to make it better. But at the same time, it can drive you crazy if you let it. Have fun!
If you don't have permissions for stuff, you need to use <i>chmod</i>. I don't know how much about Unix filesystems you know, so if I'm repeating stuff ignore me. They have 3 categories of users: User (yourself), group (people who you choose to give special permissions to), and other (everyone else). You can give read, write, and execute access to everything for each individual user category. And of course, it's done with binary bits!
Permissions on a file will look like this:
rwx r-x r--
The first set of numbers represents user access, the second is group, and the third is world. So this means that You have read, write, and execute permission on this file, the group has read and execute, but not write, and everybody else has read only. Make sense?
Just look at one category for a minute, say User. Each permission is either on or off, so think of it as a 1 or 0. For this example, User has all permissions, so instead of rwx it could look like 111, emaning all on. The Group looks like 101 and Other is 100. If you know binary, you'll see these are binary numbers 7, 5, and 4. So to set these permissions for this file you would type
<i>chmod 754 filename.txt</i>
chmod is the command name, 754 is the numbers representing the permissions, and filename is of course the file you want to change the permssions on. There are other ways to do it, but I like this way because the binary makes sense to me. I think you can also do something like:
<i>chmod u+rwx g+rx-w o+r-wx filename.txt</i>
Which does the same thing, by adding read, write, and execute permissions to user, adding r and x to group, and so on. I don't guarantee that the syntax is perfect on that, because I never use it, but it will get you started!
Now, I know you said you are staying away from command prompt for now, so all I told you won't help. I imagine you can change permission on files in the GUI by right-clicking or something, but I have only used the GUI a little bit. When I learned Linux, they threw us straight into textland.
I highly recommend you start learning how to navigate by command prompt. I bet you know DOS, so it will be an easy transition. Linux is much, much, MUCH better to work with than DOS. I'm sure you will find plenty of suggestions of good commands for beginners. Learn about pipes, and redirection, and all that fun stuff. Learn how to change your prompt to show different stuff, and try with some basic shell scripting. It's fun stuff!
Don't wait until after you have everything set up from the GUI, because first of all I don't think you CAN set everything up from the GUI. :) And don't even worry too much about getting everything set up. That's one of the quirks about Linux, like it or not. Nothing is every finished. It's good, because no matter what program you are looking at, whether it is a Windows Emu or the Kernel itself, chances are someone is always working hard to make it better. But at the same time, it can drive you crazy if you let it. Have fun!