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#1 2009-09-15 18:51:28

andrewzorn
Member
Registered: 2009-08-25
Posts: 23

Copying root's settings to a normal user

My Arch install is pretty much done, but I've been using root the whole time to play around with config files and settings.  When I made a normal user I thought I could just copy ~/.* to /home/user to get all the settings and stuff moved over, but this does not seem to work because of permissions.  I'd really not like to have to redo everything.  What can I try to get around this?  I was thinking I could change the permissions on everything but that might be tedious, I really just want config files, settings from Firefox etc to just be copied over to the normal user.

Firefox won't even start for the normal user, but I admit I was only trying it through the OpenBox launcher and do not know what its output was.

Last edited by andrewzorn (2009-09-15 18:55:54)

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#2 2009-09-15 18:55:34

Lich
Member
Registered: 2009-09-13
Posts: 437

Re: Copying root's settings to a normal user

andrewzorn wrote:

My Arch install is pretty much done, but I've been using root the whole time to play around with config files and settings.  When I made a normal user I thought I could just copy ~/.* to /home/user to get all the settings and stuff moved over, but this does not seem to work because of permissions.  I'd really not like to have to redo everything.  What can I try to get around this?  I was thinking I could change the permissions on everything but that might be tedious, I really just want config files, settings from Firefox etc to just be copied over to the normal user.

For permissions do (as root) something like

chown <user> -R /home/<user>/*
chgrp users -R /home/<user>/*

-R = recursive...no need to do that manually for every file smile

Last edited by Lich (2009-09-15 18:56:43)


Archlinux | ratpoison + evilwm | urxvtc | tmux

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#3 2009-09-15 19:09:26

andrewzorn
Member
Registered: 2009-08-25
Posts: 23

Re: Copying root's settings to a normal user

the * does not seem to be working for chown and chgrp
it says no such file or directory

EDIT though it seems to work without the /* but with the recursive option... I'm not really sure, but more than ever is working.

For the first time, I saw colors in the console under my sub-user.  This does not happen as root.  I'll have to look into this.

EDIT .bashrc, right?

Last edited by andrewzorn (2009-09-15 19:12:41)

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#4 2009-09-15 19:21:41

tomk
Forum Fellow
From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: Copying root's settings to a normal user

Yes, the * is not required if you're using -R. You can also do it all in one command i.e. set user and group at the same time. man chown for details.

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#5 2009-09-15 19:39:30

Lich
Member
Registered: 2009-09-13
Posts: 437

Re: Copying root's settings to a normal user

Yeh my bad...the * is not necesary smile
Make sure you copied the dotfiles too (.bashrc, .bash__profile etc)


Archlinux | ratpoison + evilwm | urxvtc | tmux

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#6 2009-09-15 19:53:22

andrewzorn
Member
Registered: 2009-08-25
Posts: 23

Re: Copying root's settings to a normal user

ok thanks, all seems fine now

the root doesn't seem to have bashrc or bash_profile, and if i copy in the user's one (to try to get colors) it wont work either.  cant tell if it is supposed to be this way...

got it looking pretty cool though so far with a superlightweight openbox
still trying to get the ugly gray main-window-parts to look better, more like gnome
or maybe thats just the way openbox is?  every theme i install can change the window decorations and the colors of the window contents, but it still stays boxy and sharp and plain.  im getting used to it, but is there no way for 'smoother' themes and prettier windows (again, NOT just decorations/titlebars).

EDIT also having some fstab trouble.  my external is mounted as so:

/dev/sdb1 /mnt/seagate ntfs-3g auto,rw,user,sync 0 0

but my normal user cannot access it.  i have to mount it with root then the user can see it fine.
if i try to mount as normal user i get "user has no write access to mountpoint..."
which seems obvious but i dont get it, i thought that was the point of "user/users" in fstab

Last edited by andrewzorn (2009-09-15 20:41:42)

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#7 2009-09-18 01:24:59

chpln
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2009-09-17
Posts: 361

Re: Copying root's settings to a normal user

user / users allow a user to mount a device, but write permissions to the mount point are still required.  'chmod +w /mnt/seagate' should be sufficient.

To mount the device as a user, ntfs-3g is also needs to be setuid-root due to limitations of FUSE.

See here for more information:
http://www.ntfs-3g.org/support.html#useroption

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