How do I change my permissions?

[Clinton MacDonald]

Ms. Keller:

On Saturday, October 25, 2003, at 12:30  PM, Katherine Keller wrote:
>> 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).
>
> Yeah, because in OSX you're Lucifer (the 2nd most powerful being in 
> the universe) not God.

Odd... I don't feel particularly evil when logged in as an 
administrator. In fact, as a university professor and scientist, I feel 
rather dirty when associated with anything called an "administrator." 
Perhaps we could rename "administrator" to "archangel," or something 
similarly powerful. ;-)

> I was afraid I would have to log in as God or "The Voice of God" (Su), 
> and given my great talent for typos, I look forward to that about as 
> much as handling radioactive waste with an oven mitt.

:-) Actually, we handle radioactivity on a daily basis, though two 
layers of latex gloves are less clumsy than the oven mitts.

Linux (and, by extension, Yellow Dog Linux) has many good features and 
practices. However, the paranoia-by-design approach can get a little 
tedious after awhile. It has been noted (loudly!) that one should 
*never* login as root. Bad user, bad user -- don't even mention that 
you need to login as root, or risk being publicly excoriated. However, 
this same level of paranoia extends to making the permissions for 
common, everyday desktop tasks root-level undertakings. For instance, 
to put my laptop to sleep, I must submit the /sbin/snooze command as 
root. That gets old very fast. Same deal to start or stop -- or even to 
check the status of -- my DSL connection. Almost every command-line 
function I must use (because the Linux GUI has improved enough that 
productivity tasks usually have nice GUIs), requires root privileges. 
Pah! To compensate, I find myself leaving a console window open as root 
all the time. Not very secure, is it?

Sorry for the rant!

> Cross your fingers.

The oven mitts are crossed. Good luck with YDL.

Best wishes,
Clint

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint.macdonald@ttuhsc.edu>