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Old 06-14-2001, 02:26 PM   #1
marlaina1
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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: Houston
Distribution: CentOS 5.3
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I could not get efax to run after installing it. From what I could decipher, the modem would not give me access.. So I changed permissions chmod 666 /dev/modem/

Why I chose this I do not know. But it made efax work.



Then I later log off and try to startx. It says I'm probably not the owner of the console. So I chown username.root /dev * Doesn't do it. I try chown username.username /dev * and finally chown root.root /dev *

i can see ls-l it is changing the ownerships but still won't let me startx. So I try chmod 777 /dev/* and changes the permissions but with all combinations of chown still can't startx.



I can only startx in root with any of the above combinations.



I'm pretty lost here.

Oh, red hat 6.2 on i486 - and this computer was downloaded and handed to me by a friend. It was my first pc. No windows or mac experience before.

[Edited by marlaina1 on 06-14-2001 at 03:29 PM]
 
Old 06-14-2001, 04:16 PM   #2
GonzoJohn
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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: Louisville, KY USA
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The only problem is that startx isn't in /dev.

Use this command as root

find / -name startx -print

to find the location of the startx command. It will most likely be in /usr/X11R6/bin.

 
Old 06-14-2001, 06:57 PM   #3
marlaina1
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startx in /usr/X11R6 and /Usr/bin both give anyone read and execute permission. Both are root.root but so is everything else that isn't in my home directory. I am set up to only be the owner.user set by chown,only in my home directory. And things worked before. I, as the user, have permissions to almost all files to read and execute. It was set up for me to have to go into root for a lot of things, but not startx.

And thank you for your response. I'll change ownership in those and see what happens, as a shot in the dark.
 
Old 06-14-2001, 11:01 PM   #4
jrmann1999
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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Texas
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In case you were still wondering, the chown command works as follows:

A given file can have basic permissions like
rwx rwx rwx

The first set of rwx's is the User permissions. This of course is whomever the owner of the file is gets these various permissions. When your root you are a special case since you can execute anything on the system that has at least a user+x flag.

The second set pertains to group permissions, this is pretty straightforward.

The third set is for 'other' which means you can compile and set a file executable by anyone on the system.

Your using this and not even knowing it when you chmod 666 something.

The way the numbering works is a bit tricky if you don't know binary, but it's not too tough to pick up

Let's say I have a file with permission rw-rw-r--
This would have a number permission of: 110 110 100 or 6 6 4
This simply boils down to converting to decimal the mode you would like(755 for instance = rwxr-xr-x) and is useful for utilities you would like other people to execute but not to overwrite.

Play with this with simple text files so you might understand a bit more.

J
 
  


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