Dolphin Can't save Bookmarks?

[Andrew Jarrett]

On Jan 4, 2008 7:04 PM, Clark <cpmcc at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>  Whatever the niceties of the options above, all way above my head, by
> inserting a literal copy including spaces and Capitals,  Dolphin no longer
> does peculiar things on shut down.  Is Sudo the Linux command language and
> if so where do I access the hand book?
>
>  Thanks Terence and Nils,
>
>  Clark.

Let's break this down for you ;)

sudo chown -R $(whoami):$(whoami) ~/.kde/share/apps/d3lphin/

Sudo -- is not the Linux command language, it is actually a program.
Sudo let's you (a normal user) *DO* things as a *Super User* (not sure
if that's officially what it stands for, but that's how I think about
it).  This is useful when you want to tamper with system files or run
certain commands and you don't want to login as root (which is
actually disabled by default in K/Ubuntu for security concerns).  When
you run a command with "sudo" at the front, it means that the system
will run the command like you are root and not a normal user.  In your
case, you needed to have sudo at the front of the command because you
were changing the ownership of all the files in a directory  and root
is the only user allowed to make those kinds of changes.  If you now
understand the concept of "sudo", then congratulations, you have
become geeky enough to chuckle at this comic:
http://xkcd.com/149/

chown -- CHange OWNership.  Changes the ownership of a given file or directory.

-R -- this option means that chown will change the ownership of the
directory *Recursively*, meaning that it will change the ownership of
_everything_ (file or folder) within the given folder.

$(whoami):$(whoami) -- this may seem complex, but really isn't.
Whoami is a program that returns the name of the user that runs the
program.  If your user is "clark" then running whoami will return
"clark".  $(whoami) is just a dynamic way of specifying the user/group
and, if your user is "clark", $(whoami):$(whoami) is semantically
equal to saying clark:clark.  The purpose of this part of the command
was to specify the user (clark) and group (clark) that would be the
new owner of the directory; note that before the colon you are
specifying the user and after you are specifying the group
(user:group).  If you really want to know what a group is, do some
independent research.

~/.kde/share/apps/d3lphin/ -- this is the folder of which the
ownership you are changing.  The folder "~/.kde/share/apps/d3lphin/"
contains user-specific settings and other stuff you probably don't
care much about (unless, as in your case, the folder belongs to the
wrong user).  The "~/" is a shortcut for saying "/home/clark/"
(assuming the name of your user is "clark" again).  The "." in ".kde"
means that the folder is hidden.  This also works for hiding files.

I hope this clears up some of the confusion.

Note: The official language of the Linux shell is called shell script.
 There are _plenty_ of online and offline resources for shell script.
Try googling "bash shell script tutorials" or picking up an O'Reilly
book.

Andrew

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