I am using slackware 10 and I have found that almost all the problems im having are because im a user and I don't have permission to access anything. I have found that when logged in as root I can do anything I want and life is much easier. So basically why is using root for everyday use so terrible and if it really is so terrible how do i give my user account more permissions. thanks.

when you are typing rm -rf /home/something/somehting... and acidently hit the enter key after you type rm-rf / you will know why you should not run as root....


second you are more prone to have your system owned if you run as root by certain exploits etc.... blah blah...

its unsafe.. but then again its your system do as your please.

Staying as root is a bad idea because (a) it's a security hazard and (b) it's easy to hose your system as root. Basically, if you stay as root, every time you launch a web browser or an FTP client or an IRC session, it also runs with root priviliges, and if there's a bug in that application that allows it to execute malicious code from the Internet .... well, you're screwed. If you were running as a normal user, then the malicious code couldn't do anywhere near as much damage (though it would still give you a bad day). As for point (b), suppose one day you type

when you meant rm -rf /home/user/olddir (note the extra space). Congratulations, you just turned your machine into a toaster. You win a chance to reinstall the OS from scratch (or from tape backup). If you were running as a user, you'd just get a permission denied error.

Remember, permissions are your friends, not your enemies. You can use sudo to easily execute commands with root priviliedges when you need them. Or just su to root on occasion. Once you're box and all the software you want has been installed, you really shouldn't need root that much. I've gone for a week or more without becoming root on my primary workstation, and I become root usually only to install software or run a packet sniffer on my home LAN.

thanks i understand why not to know but how do I give my user account permission such as mounting devices?

for mounting devices, edit /etc/fstab (as root).
add "user" to the options for each device you want users to mount.
example:

what if i want access to certain directories such as /usr/local/ like for installing programs

I'd suggest typing "su" followed by root password...install your application and then exit root. It takes 3 seconds.

but how do i install from the command line?

There is another way to install software other than on the command line???
Oh snap. I always do in on the command line.

It is just bad juju to do everything as root, to many things can go wrong. One wrong stroke of the keyboard and your all jacked up, also when your running as root, if someone gets control of your account, you can consider yourself pwned. You are officially shit.

The last reason I never use root, is simply because of organization, if you want to keep your computer organized, or rather force you to keep your stuff organized you have to use root, I have a very large book collection on my computer about computers, well I install them as a regular user, and keep them organized as a regular user, so that I can find them. If I ran everything as root, they would all be in root's home directory.

Another reason it's bad to do everything as root, it makes admining your system such a pain, you have to go back and chmod everything if you want another user to see, or touch anything. It can get pretty ugly. I ran everything as root for 1 month to see something, my system looked so jacked up, I just reinstalled the darn OS.

also i added the line
/dev/sda /mnt/usb auto user 0 0
to fstab and i am still not allowed access to mnt/usb

How is this different from making my everyday user a member of the "disk" and "floppy" groups? I ask because of my thread http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=220972 about Groups, and because making myself a part of those groups did not let me access any files on my hard drives.

I guess someday this will all seem so easy?

zwyrbla, the fstab file just defines what systems can be mounted where and who can do so. You still have to actually mount the filesystem via the mount cmd
A shortcut is just to run
mount -a
which mounts everything it can..... You can see what's currently mounted by looking at /etc/mtab (but do not try to edit this virtual file).

That's priceless...