1001 Linux Questions... How do I...

[Aunty Em]

a) Log on as "root"?
b) Activate the firewall?
c) Do I need a virus scanner?
d) Explore my hard drive?
e) Persuade my browser to go to the homepage of MY choice?

Those will do for starters...

 

[tommyj27]

a) at the login prompt type 'root' and then the root password
b) depends what distribution, the firewall implementation varies, mine is just a configuration script that gets run at startup
c) no, unless you're running a mail server and you want to scan messages i can't think of a reason, there are security exploits in various packages and worms exist that take advantage of them but not nearly on the scale that virii affect MS boxen
d) once again, depending on your software choices, if you have gnome or kde for a desktop environment you probably have window-based browsing capabilities. otherwise you can navigate the filesystem from a terminal, i'll dig up a link for you in a minute here
e) just like in a windows browser, for mozilla it's edit->preferences

 

[tommyj27]

here's some linkage for you aunty
justlinux is a good resource, it used to be called linux-newbie, some good too the point howtos and a forum, not that we don't know everything here
http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Filesystems/Filesystems_Directories_and_Devices.html
http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Filesystems/Directory_Navigation.html
http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Filesystems/File_Permissions.html
http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Command_Reference
This is the linux documentation project, far more than you'll ever care to know, it's a great resource
http://www.tldp.org/
i'll add more as i think of them

 

[Gonz]

The problem with most Linux info sites is they are speaking to those with some clue. It's hard to figure some of that out when one is a lifetime member of the Windoze club.

 

[tommyj27]

i was a card carrying winblows club member before last june, just linux is a good place to start out because it's focused on newbies, especially coming from MS, i'll try and keep my explainations as simple as possible too, if i start speaking in techno-jibberish someone slap me. in fact i think my first post was kinda sketchy just because i'm freaking out about cpu temps right now.

 

[chcr]

I usually don't bother logging in as root. I just bring up a terminal window and log is as "superuser." You can do most of the day to day admin stuff, and you don't have to log in and out of your GUI. At the terminal window prompt type "su" (without the quotes of course) and the password will be the same as your root password. tommj's links and answers are pretty good. You can treat Konquerer more or less as Netscape 4.x. Welcome to the geek club.

 

[PT]

*Slaps TommyJ*

 

[tommyj27]

good point chcr, su'ing to root is usually a better idea anyways, that way you don't start doing everyday things as root, THIS IS BAD. it's way to easy to do really dumb things as root like deleting /lib

 

[fury]

Plus, aren't you more vulnerable to attacks as root? Or does this fall under the certain packages thing like with virii?

 

[tommyj27]

when you're running servers (mail, web, ftp, etc.) you want to try and avoid running them as root because certain exploits will give an attacker root access. beyond this, using the root account as a regular user doesn't pose a danger other than the menace you are to yourself.

 

[chcr]

easy to do really dumb things as root like deleting /lib

You mean I'm not the only one? You live and you learn...

 

[tommyj27]

another good one to avoid is chmod ug-rwx <your home directory>, instead of go-rwx. that one really pissed me off.

for the uninitiated, i meant to deny access to my home directory to everyone but me (go = group & everyone but me), instead i used a u (owner permission) instead of an o and denyed myself access to my home directory

 

[chcr]

That one beats anything I've done

 

[Aunty Em]

GREAT! Thanks for the links tommy, that looks like exactly what I need. I was thinking that it looks a bit like DOS, but having begun to read I see it's going to be a little more complicated than that, so it should be quite interesting. It'll be nice to have a system that takes a little more brain to use.

Oh, and I'm a geekette btw.

 

[chcr]

Oh, and I'm a geekette btw.

K

 

[drkavnger99]

Yay some web pages I might actually be able to understand! I just installed redhat 8 on my laptop lets see if I can now use it to some potential!

 

[Luis G]

Plus, aren't you more vulnerable to attacks as root? Or does this fall under the certain packages thing like with virii?

Yes you are, but then again, there's a way to gain root access without knowing the root password or even logging as root.

 

[tommyj27]

That one beats anything I've done

just did another noteworthy oops. I was just shredding a bunch of sensitive crap from my dying harddrive before i send it back to maxtor. this is basically what happened:

shredding stuff enron style on mounted disk, goes to unmount filesystem before shredding entire disk
> cd
> ls
oh, here's some more shit i don't want running around, backups of /etc and other stuff with passwords and whatnot
> shred -u -v *
sits back to watch it work, OH SHIT! 'cd' took me back to the working /root, not <mounted filesystem>/root. ^C, curses a lot more.

 

[PT]

oops.

 

[cubcake1]

The more I read Linux issues, the more I love Windows. No need to log in as root here...and if you did have to, it would just be some sort of doubleclick on the desktop...LOL