Permissions Problem

NegativeFPS · 2008-04-17 03:13:55

Hi. I tried asking this on the IRC channel but got nothing but elitist attitude and no answer.

I just finished installing AL according to the beginners guide. Everything went fine. Except when I'm using my regular user, I can't open the menu editor, yet I can if I log in as root.

I'm not so much concerned about not being able to open the menu editor as worrying about what else I may encounter because of this in the future.

I also tried getting alacarte, but when I try to open alacarte in my regular user, it opens, BUT it opens the regular gnome menu instead of alacarte itself! And it won't save my changes, either.

bender02 · 2008-04-17 03:55:52

Well, "cd" and "ls -la" lists all (also hidden) files in your home directory, along with permissions and owner/group. All those files should owned by you (the user), and not by root. You can change the owner/group with the command 'chown' (command line, "man chown" -> manual page). If you have a particular problem (e.g. with menu editor), you might want to check its config dirs/files. Gnome stuff tends to be in ~/.gnome2/.

NegativeFPS · 2008-04-17 03:56:06

/bonks on head.

I tried removing alacarte and then trying to use the menu editor... voila.

A quick question though. What should my user premissions be in /etc/groups? While I was trying to figure out how to make alacarte work, I added myself to pretty much everything there except for "root"

bender02 · 2008-04-17 03:59:44

NegativeFPS wrote:

What should my user premissions be in /etc/groups? While I was trying to figure out how to make alacarte work, I added myself to pretty much everything there except for "root"

Not sure what you're asking about. Permissions are permissions and groups are groups. You can choose to which groups you want to belong to. The minimalist approach is: start with being in "users" and "wheel" and then add groups that you know what are there for. Leave alone those about which you have no idea.

NegativeFPS · 2008-04-17 04:09:28

bender02 wrote:

NegativeFPS wrote:
What should my user premissions be in /etc/groups? While I was trying to figure out how to make alacarte work, I added myself to pretty much everything there except for "root"
Not sure what you're asking about. Permissions are permissions and groups are groups. You can choose to which groups you want to belong to. The minimalist approach is: start with being in "users" and "wheel" and then add groups that you know what are there for. Leave alone those about which you have no idea.

Alright, I'll do that.

But I just found out that I still can't save changes, yet I can if I log in as root.

here is ls -la:

total 37
drwx------ 22 boris users  872 2008-04-16 23:01 .
drwxr-xr-x  6 root  root   128 2008-04-16 16:56 ..
-rw-------  1 boris users 1743 2008-04-16 22:55 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--  1 boris users   16 2008-04-16 16:56 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--  1 boris users   48 2008-04-16 16:56 .bashrc
drwx------  4 root  root    96 2008-04-16 21:13 .config
drwxr-xr-x  2 boris users   48 2008-04-16 21:15 .dasher
drwx------  3 root  root    80 2008-04-16 21:13 .dbus
drwxr-xr-x  2 boris users   48 2008-04-16 20:49 Desktop
-rw-------  1 boris users   26 2008-04-16 23:01 .dmrc
drwx------  4 boris users   96 2008-04-16 23:01 .gconf
drwx------  2 boris users   80 2008-04-16 23:06 .gconfd
drwx------  4 boris users  136 2008-04-16 20:52 .geany
-rw-r-----  1 boris users    0 2008-04-16 21:31 .gksu.lock
drwx------  9 boris users  304 2008-04-16 23:01 .gnome2
drwx------  2 boris users   48 2008-04-16 20:49 .gnome2_private
drwx------  2 boris users  168 2008-04-16 22:17 .gnupg
drwxr-xr-x  2 boris users   88 2008-04-16 20:49 .gstreamer-0.10
drwx------  2 boris users   48 2008-04-16 20:49 .gvfs
-rw-------  1 boris users  338 2008-04-16 23:01 .ICEauthority
drwxr-xr-x  2 boris users   48 2008-04-16 21:07 .icons
drwxr-xr-x  3 boris root    72 2008-04-16 21:13 .local
drwx------  3 boris users   72 2008-04-16 20:49 .metacity
drwx------  2 boris users   80 2008-04-16 21:16 .mozilla
drwxr-xr-x  3 boris users  600 2008-04-16 23:01 .nautilus
-rw-r--r--  1 boris users  218 2008-04-16 23:01 .recently-used.xbel
drwx------  2 boris users   48 2008-04-16 22:17 .ssh
drwxr-xr-x  2 boris users   48 2008-04-16 21:07 .themes
drwx------  3 boris users   72 2008-04-16 21:07 .thumbnails
-rw-------  1 boris users  122 2008-04-16 23:01 .Xauthority
-rwxr-xr-x  1 boris users  108 2008-04-16 20:56 .xinitrc
-rw-r--r--  1 boris users 1343 2008-04-16 23:06 .xsession-errors

What do you think?

bender02 · 2008-04-17 04:45:43

Well, as I said in my first post: everything there should be owned by you (boris) with group users. Some dirs are owned by root (.config, .dbus, .local), and so you need to change them to be owned by you. The proper command is (while in the your home dir ~)

chown -R boris:users .config .dbus .local

It would be probably good if you would read some basics about file ownership/permissions (e.g. on wikipedia).

NegativeFPS · 2008-04-17 04:58:41

bender02 wrote:

Well, as I said in my first post: everything there should be owned by you (boris) with group users. Some dirs are owned by root (.config, .dbus, .local), and so you need to change them to be owned by you. The proper command is (while in the your home dir ~)
chown -R boris:users .config .dbus .local
It would be probably good if you would read some basics about file ownership/permissions (e.g. on wikipedia).

worked like a charm. thank you!

tigrmesh · 2008-04-17 16:10:12

The wiki has a helpful page on groups: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Groups.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-04-17 03:13:55

Permissions Problem

#2 2008-04-17 03:55:52

Re: Permissions Problem

#3 2008-04-17 03:56:06

Re: Permissions Problem

#4 2008-04-17 03:59:44

Re: Permissions Problem

#5 2008-04-17 04:09:28

Re: Permissions Problem

#6 2008-04-17 04:45:43

Re: Permissions Problem

#7 2008-04-17 04:58:41

Re: Permissions Problem

#8 2008-04-17 16:10:12

Re: Permissions Problem

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