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Old 07-13-2001, 12:37 AM   #1
almostnew
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Question root problem


its been a while hi! another dumb question
i was last on in install problem i got thru that i got mandrak 8
after several restart and reinstall i got the right configuration on two machine .
?> home network what is lisa and how do i set it up. the win computer sees mdkgroup no files linux file browser tells me i need to set up lan browser (lan browser tells me i need to be (root)to set it up all of the orther config setup prog. give a little box to enter the root password ... how do i get on to this config setup lisa as root.??
 
Old 07-13-2001, 03:06 AM   #2
jharris
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I'm a little confused... Just use the username of 'root' and whatever you set your password as when you installed for your login details. You're trying to setup a LAN right?

cheers

Jamie...
 
Old 07-13-2001, 12:45 PM   #3
almostnew
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almost confused about root

yes iam seting up a network and maybe i am a little confused about root ? is that the same as su .. i login with my name and password auto at x start and use a terminal (super user)for command line stuff .but mostley i am useing gui ..
my net does work and the internet works it has to do with i cant see any files on win host nor files on linux from win side on win computer i see groupnames mshome and mdkgroup that on linux machine i see nothing ... i get message you need to set up lan browser ...i set lan browser ..i open lan browser set up in menu item other config network and i get lisa it seems i can set up and save changes so maybe that first screen general is just a info screen...
 
Old 07-13-2001, 01:41 PM   #4
jharris
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If you issue the su command and enter the correct password the you will become root (only in that specific terminal though). For full-on admin tasks I'd suggest you login as root from the login prompt.

So you want to be able to see shares on your linux box from Windows and see your Windows machine when running Linux yeah?? If this is the case you should be using Samba, however I can't say that I'm familiar with 'lan browser', I assume its a front end to one of the Samba tools.

Any of the Mandrake people out there confirm or deny this one??

I can't really follow your last post, can you explain a bit further?

Cheers

Jamie...
 
Old 07-13-2001, 07:38 PM   #5
almostnew
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Wink

samba is fine works great
you know what . i have read 3 books on linux now read about 5 hours of theads on the net and all the talk about root and perrmissions and security (i failed to crasp that what it really ment was to acctually type in for a user name the word root!

yes there is a part of lisa on general tab that needs to be setup
i will try later on that machine.

thanx
 
Old 07-15-2001, 12:23 AM   #6
almostnew
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tried to reset every thing while loged in as rooot and just like that another can of ???????? 's where did all my stuff go samba is gone i cant get to it ? all net setings are gone packages i had just loaded or installed where gone ?> can two differnt linux 's share the same space within a partition ie- is linux root user able to see or use every thing all files hidden or other wise .
 
Old 07-16-2001, 02:14 PM   #7
gizmola
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Quote:
Originally posted by jharris
If you issue the su command and enter the correct password the you will become root (only in that specific terminal though). For full-on admin tasks I'd suggest you login as root from the login prompt.

So you want to be able to see shares on your linux box from Windows and see your Windows machine when running Linux yeah?? If this is the case you should be using Samba, however I can't say that I'm familiar with 'lan browser', I assume its a front end to one of the Samba tools.

Any of the Mandrake people out there confirm or deny this one??

I can't really follow your last post, can you explain a bit further?

Cheers

Jamie...
Well i slightly disagree with Jamie on this. I rarely login as root, and most common security setups highly discourage allowing for example, a root login through telnet.

At any rate, I thought i might add that, su (short for superuser) does change you to root. It can also change you from whatever user you are currently logged in as, to any other user by issuing a user name. So:

su (changes to root)

su usera (changes to usera)

Now, here's the key point I wanted to make! Each user has an environment. If you are logged in as say usera, and you su, you are now root, but will still have the environment of usera, ie, whatever path usera had, which often will not included some subdirectories that root has in it's normal path.

If you want not only to su as root, but also to load roots profile and environment do:

su -

At this point, it will be as if you did the login as root. To the best of my knowledge, this is sort of a sysadmin best practice. Some environments even go one better, and implement sudo which is a wrapper program that can be used to execute programs as root without ever becoming root.

There's so much more to security, and even though I've been *nixing for a long time, I still have only touched the surface of this, but i thought I'd throw in my 2 cents anyways gl.
 
Old 07-16-2001, 02:22 PM   #8
jharris
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Quote:
Originally posted by gizmola
Well i slightly disagree with Jamie on this. I rarely login as root, and most common security setups highly discourage allowing for example, a root login through telnet.
My recommendation was on the assumption that almostnew was going to be using graphical admin tools, in which case doing an su would be a pain as all his menu's would still be running in his original user context so he'd need to set his DISPLAY environment and start everything from the command line, which would be a pain for a newbie.

I absolutely agree about the telnet... not a good idea!

cheers

Jamie...
 
Old 07-16-2001, 02:30 PM   #9
gizmola
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Quote:
Originally posted by jharris
My recommendation was on the assumption that almostnew was going to be using graphical admin tools, in which case doing an su would be a pain as all his menu's would still be running in his original user context so he'd need to set his DISPLAY environment and start everything from the command line, which would be a pain for a newbie.

I absolutely agree about the telnet... not a good idea!

cheers

Jamie...
Agreed. Out of the box, the x stuff is pretty much wired to assume you're going to x on the console, and nowhere else due to the basic insecurity of the x protocol. In fact, i probably should have stated: don't telnet, use ssh instead.

One thing i might add, if you do use x on the console, which is all well and good, don't irc from there. Most irc clients when they startup even warn you about this. At any rate, you are quite right about running the gui tools. Although they are quite convenient, since i run some linux based web servers, i have all the gui stuff removed for security reasons, so i have to do all the admin from the shell on those.
 
Old 07-16-2001, 06:41 PM   #10
ctdp
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Read documentation

I recommend reading online Linux documentation at all possible sources. Anyone seriously interested in learning Linux must be willing to read. Some of the books are good (not all), but you can learn everything you need online.

Read the Documentation at:

http://ctdp.tripod.com/os/linux/index.html

Read the User's Guide, Files and Command Reference, and the beginning of How Linux Works.

Also checkout the Weblinks section and go to the Linux Documentation Project at:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/

Checkout the various how tos, and documents to learn more. If you don't want to do that much reading, use Windows, otherwise, enjoy the experience.
 
Old 08-12-2001, 11:34 AM   #11
Garret
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used to have root path without "su -"

Quote:
Originally posted by gizmola
environment. If you are logged in as say usera, and you su, you are now root, but will still have the environment of usera, ie, whatever path usera had, which often will not included some subdirectories that root has in it's normal path.

If you want not only to su as root, but also to load roots profile and environment do:

su -
This makes sense and seems to work, but here's my situation's history (RH 7.0 i386):

* I log in (SSH) using, for example, "user".

* I switch to root using "su"

* As root, used to be able to access linuxconf and shutdown from anywhere, so /sbin apparently got was on my path.

* Now, for some strange reason I can no longer access linuxconf and shutdown. Sure enough, /sbin is not on my path and /root/.bash_profile isn't being executed. Using "su -" executes everything and puts /sbin on my path.

* However, "su -" also puts me in the /root directory initially instead of leaving me in the current directory, so I'm sure there were no aliases that made me use "su -".

* I have not reconfigured any profiles that I am aware of.

The question is then, why could I originally access /sbin files, even though /root/.bash_profile apparently wasn't being run, and why did this suddenly stop working?

(Note that I recently upgraded a lot of Apache/Horde/OpenSSL rpms, if that matters.)

Garret
 
Old 08-13-2001, 08:18 PM   #12
gizmola
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I'm a bit confused about what your question is. When you su - you will indeed load a new copy of the environment, and load the .profile for root, which dumps you into the root user's home directory. So in this case, yes, you will have your cwd changed.
 
Old 08-13-2001, 08:43 PM   #13
Garret
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Quote:
Originally posted by gizmola
I'm a bit confused about what your question is. When you su - you will indeed load a new copy of the environment, and load the .profile for root, which dumps you into the root user's home directory. So in this case, yes, you will have your cwd changed.
My question was listed in the message: "why could I originally access /sbin files, even though /root/.bash_profile apparently wasn't being run, and why did this suddenly stop working?"

In other words, I used to use "su" (and not "su -") and still be able to run linuxconf, etc. from anywhere, but that suddenly stopped working. Any idea why?

(I never even knew about using "su -" until reading this thread trying to figure out why it stopped working.)
 
Old 08-13-2001, 09:08 PM   #14
sancho5
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back on the topic then, it seems what he is asking is how to get LISA set up... what i can think is that LISA is short for LAN Information Server, or something, and near as I can tell, it is a sort of Network Neighborhood for Linux? I think this is quite wrong though, as the setup options don't point to it.
If you are looking for a graphical frontend to Samba, there are surely better out there, and easier. I have a link for one somewhere, but not right with me. Respond if you want.
 
Old 08-28-2001, 01:53 AM   #15
almostnew
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(So you want to be able to see shares on your linux box from Windows and see your Windows machine when running Linux yeah?? If this is the case you should be using Samba, however I can't say that I'm familiar with 'lan browser', I assume its a front end to one of the Samba tools. )

quote from gizmola

Any of the Mandrake people out there confirm or deny this one??

from almostnew _yes i want to see windos files on linux box and share some linux files with windows just like windows shares files now between two computers all of the fanfare sofar for linux as been that its a great network program very stable and easy to use (not)

i played a game on it the other day it was fun .
i do my work on windows box.

thanks ... lets let this thread end close it
 
  


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