need help with user permissions

clintpatty · Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 2:41 am Post subject: need help with user permissions

I'm not sure what forum this belongs in. I'm having trouble with user permissions for games, mounted devices, X, sound, and other things. I could post all the problems, but I think I need to read a guide. I have all the cdrom,users,wheel,etc enabled, but it's not enough. Mandrake was really friendly in automating this and giving me everything I need but not allowing editing of system files. I haven't been able to access nice GUI tools like gnome-control-center. I'm ready to cut loose stuff like harddrake and mandrake-control-center, but I like GUI config tools for the window manager. Where should I start reading?

lnxz · Guru Joined: 03 Jul 2005 Posts: 472 Location: Earth

If you're trying to run system configuration tools you probably need to be root. If you're using udev check what groups own the different devices you need to access and make sure you're part of those groups and that the modes are sane.
Also I think you should be a bit more specific as to what isn't working for you and what error messages you get.

ikaro · Advocate Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 2527 Location: Denmark

clintpatty · Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 12:27 am Post subject:

Perhaps I should post/search for separate topics. I was hoping that there would be a single system wide thing to do, but I do not think that is the case. What do I do about issues with certain programs, like gphoto2 and cd/dvd burning apps? Must I change permissions for each program/corresponding device? Also, user clintpatty is in the games group, but cannot get past certain points when connecting to multiplayer on both games.

Also, when I chown my XFS drives it works, but I have been unable to chown the FAT drive. I've understood in the past that this is a vfat issue and that vfat permissions are determined by mounting. This seems to correspond to the fact that I can umount then mount as normal user clintpatty the vfat drive, and all permissions are fine. However, the regular mount while booting allowed access under Mandrake.

Configuring my screen saver and sound and other such things was easy under Mandrake. Do I just need to learn how to do all of these and set the permissions and all? I don't really have a problem with doing stuff manually, but I don't like it for X. I would like to be able to configure X things in X simply. Another example is getting the scroll to work on my mouse. Is there any way to get Pan to use less ram?