On Thu, Feb 14, 2002 at 06:01:30PM -0500, Ronald KA4INM Youvan wrote:
<snip>
> I find it impossible to get things done without spending an
> enormous amount of time going back and fourth between being
> the root user and a commoner, to change permissions and
> ownership's.
You can actually do a surprising number of things as Joe L. User. Here's
the way I do this. I leave 1 (one) console (tty1) open as root. The rest
are as me (paulf). This is on a single machine behind a firewall. There
are very few things I ever have to do as root. Mounting disks and CDs,
running ppp (except that I don't do that now that I have DSL)... that's
about it. A regular user can _look_ at most of the files on the system,
including the /etc/ directory and /usr/share/doc directory files. Most
programs can be run as a regular user. For the few that won't run that
way, you've got your tty1. Make liberal use of mc, which makes surfing
your own computer much much simpler and faster.
You might try running as Joe L. User exclusively for a while and see
what programs won't run and what things you just _can't_ do that way.
Note those down. After a while, you'll get a good feel for what you
_have_ to be root to do. Really, it amounts to anything that would
effect all users on a system.
Paul
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