How do I change my permissions?

[Clinton MacDonald]

Ms. Keller:

On Saturday, October 25, 2003, at 11:17  AM, Katherine Keller wrote:

> Okay, I thought I'd start playing around with YUM and installing some 
> software and such.

Quite admirable. As a Linux/YDL newbie myself, I am finding that 
installing and updating applications is one of the most foreign aspects 
to a Mac user.

> The cthulu speech that followed said:

:-)

> After going to the YDL page and reading up on what to do with YUM I 
> opened the terminal and tried both
>
> yum list & YUM list
> [...]
>
> Is this something to do with my not having the right permissions when 
> logged in on my every day account? I've been poking around in the 
> various menus, but can't find anything that will let me change the 
> permissions I have on my every day account.

Yes, you have that right. The answer, however, is simpler than you 
imagine. Unfortunately, it all is done from the command line. 
Fortunately, it is pretty easy.

You cannot install or update from a normal user account, you must be 
logged in as "root." This differs from, say, Mac OS X, where an 
administrative user can do almost anything that "root" can do (which is 
a better system, IMHO).

There are three basic ways to log in as root from the command line 
(number [2] is the easiest and most generally useful):

[1] Actually log in:

[katherine@localhost]$ login
login: root
Password: ********
[root@localhost]#

Note that the prompt changes from a "$" to a "#". Perform all your yum 
listing, updates and installs. When you are done, type "exit" and you 
will log out.

[2] "su" -- substitute user identity, or "superuser":

[katherine@localhost]$ su
Password: ********
[root@localhost]#

"su" gives you temporary root privileges -- I am not at a Linux box 
right now, so I can't tell you for how long it lasts. I find this to be 
the most generally useful form to perform root actions, unless I am 
performing more than five or six in a row.

[3] "sudo" -- do a single command as if you were root:

[katherine@localhost]$ sudo yum list
Password: ********
Gathering package information from servers
...

Before you can use sudo, however, you must add your name to a special 
list of "sudo users" (/etc/sudoers). To do this, you must actually 
login as root (number [1], above) and edit the /etc/sudoers file with a 
modified version of "vi" called "visudo." Again, I am sorry that I 
cannot tell you more because I am not at YD Linux right now, but this 
page has a nice description of how to do this:

<http://www.mklinux.org/getting_started/whatnow/sudo.html>

> How do I set myself up so that I have the kind of privlidges I have 
> when running OSX? Where I can do anything but muck around with the 
> files owned by root?

Play with the methods I mentioned above, and see if any of them meet 
your needs. And, let us know how you succeed!

> PS. Preferably from the GUI, not the CLI.

Ha! That would not be The Linux Way, Grasshopper. ;-) For what it is 
worth, for basic no-frills updates to your existing packages, the yum 
update approach -- from the command line -- is pretty easy and 
trouble-free. But for knowing which packages you might want to install 
as new, or what is the exact name of something you want to explore, a 
GUI would be really nice.

Good luck!

Best wishes,
Clint

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT 
net>