some linux newbie questions, please help

[Mendel]

I'm using fedora core 3 and gnome nowadays...

#1

Okay, So I want to set permissions for each and every file and folder so that any user can read, write and execute any file. Starting from the / folder, including every subfolder thereof. I explicitly want no security, I want access to my computer. I am the user, the only user, occasional other users will be under my supervision and will be beaten properly if they fuck up. So...

what is the correct console command?

#2

Im using root user so that I can do as much stuff as possible, but some applications insist that I can't use them as root for some reason or other.
For example ircnet irc server irkki.saunalahti.fi doesnt let me connect as root
some game says: panic, detected some kind of a superuser and refuses to start.

Soo... I need to give user "Mendel" all the rights the "root" user has so that I dont have to give the root user password whenever I want to change some setting, dig my nose or do some menial tasks. I need access to every local file and folder, including the root folder, everything.
How?

#3.

how do I make a clickable script to my gnome desktop
I can make a quick link for "xmms" for example quite easily by just making a launcher to the desktop and use "xmms" as a command there.

But if I put "echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/legacy_va_layout" as a command, it doesnt compute, I need to copy&paste that to terminal... well I could do that every time but I would prefer clicking. How do I do this?

If I want to do a longer scripts, executed with single click from desktop, how do I make it?

these are the scripts I want to execute: (I'm typing it to terminal each boot now)

script a)
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/legacy_va_layout
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
cedega /root/Transgaming_drive/games/Heroes3/Heroes3.exe


script b)
mount /dev/hdc1 /mnt/hdc1
mount /dev/hdc3 /mnt/hdc3
mount /dev/hdc5 /mnt/hdc5

(I don't want this to happen automagically each boot since the hdd isn't always in)


#4

I will forget my password. My girlfriend shouldn't be forced to remember a long password with lower case, upper case and number characters and write it every time she wants to play heroes3 (and copy paste all those terminal thingies)

How do I login automatically as "root" or as "mendel" ?

#5

This font is horrible. How do I set firefox to use the same font that there was in windows? This is wrong font altogether, antialiased in some funny way probably meant for lcd displays (I have crt) I need to zoom it very much for it to be readable at all and even then it just feels wrong. It's too "thin" yes, thats it, I need it bolder.

Thanks for any and all help.

 

[arjan de lumens]

#1: try to execute as root : chmod -R 777 /

#2: requires modifying the file /etc/passwd:
find a line saying something like (replace 'user' with your username)

user:1000:100::/home/user

change it to

user:0:0::/home/user

This may or may not screw up your linux installation - take a backup of /etc/passwd before you try this.

#3: Put the script in a file, starting with the line
#!/bin/bash
follwed by your commannds on the other lines, then use chmod to make the script executable, then you should be able to make a link to it - I think.

#4: GDM has an auto-login feature which might do what you want; never used it myself, so I don't know the details. Try to google for 'gdm autologin'

#5: Can't help you with this one, as I haven't been using Firefox. There is probably some Preferences screen somewhere that allows you to override the default from selection.

 

[Mendel]

#1: try to execute as root : chmod -R 777 /

what does -R stand for? and what do those 3 7s mean?
I thought r was for reading files and + enabled and - disabled :?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

#1: try to execute as root : chmod -R 777 /

what does -R stand for? and what do those 3 7s mean?
I thought r was for reading files and + enabled and - disabled :?

-R is for recursive.

777 is the octet on the file permission for owner, group and world. It's the equivalent of making a file rwxrwxrwx.

If you have the man pages installed, you should be able to get the info on this command by typing "man chmod".

 

[passerby]

#1 Okay, So I want to set permissions for each and every file and folder so that any user can read, write and execute any file.

#2 Im using root user so that I can do as much stuff as possible, but some applications insist that I can't use them as root for some reason or other.

You are removing an important layer of security from the system. *NIX is not Windoze. In Windoz you are required to logout, then login again as Administrator to perform administrative work. For people that want to do a lot of messing around this is a great inconvenience, and so some end up running the administrator a/c by default. In *NIX you can su root from 'Mendel' without logging out(that should be in the wheel group by default) whenever admin work needs to be done, so there's no reason to run the a/c as root.

And Fedora is not really an ideal choice for new Linux users. If I recall correctly un-needed services such as sshd and httpd are running by default.

 

[mkillio]

what would you say is the best linux for newbiews?

 

[passerby]

what would you say is the best linux for newbiews?

Sorry I don't know. Two years ago I would have said Mandrake, but I'm no longer in the "easy to use loop"....

http://distrowatch.com/ is a good collection of distros, descriptions, reviews etc.

And my complaint against Fedora is mainly that it installs and runs unnecessary services - newcomers won't think of running netstat or nmap against the installation. You can shut them down under 'Services' at the Fedora menu. Then we have the problem that newcomers don't know which service is unnecessary... Don't know how secure are the default iptables rules of Fedora core 3.

 

[Saem]

SuSE will likely be easiest for a Linux noobie.

 

[mkillio]

Well I;ve narrowed it down to Mandrake 10.0, Linspire 4.5 and SUSE 9.1. I've messed with Linspire Live which is a bootable cd-rom ver. (preview version) I think I might have liked Mandrake 9.1 better when I tried taht earlier this year. However I read a comparative review and Linspire ended up on top by quite a large margin. Anyways, any suggestions?