new to ubuntu; have a few questions

[ac]

Dwain Alford wrote:

> On 11/9/06, *Steve Flynn* <anothermindbomb at gmail.com
> <mailto:anothermindbomb at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     On 09/11/06, *Dwain Alford* <dwain.alford at gmail.com
>     <mailto:dwain.alford at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>         On 11/9/06, *Eamonn Sullivan* < eamonn.sullivan at gmail.com
>         <mailto:eamonn.sullivan at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>             You can make yourself root in any terminal window by typing:
>             sudo -i
>             And then entering your own password. Be careful with this,
>             however.
>             It's easy to make a (irreversible) mistake.
> 
>         as a "former" windows user i enjoyed admin privileges to do what
>         i needed to do with the computer.

you also had the advantage of the previous experience about what to do
an dhow to do it

>         this is what i want to do. 
>         this command will do it for me?  before i do this, would you
>         please explain what the irreversible mistake is?

any small error as a newbie (I found) becomes a total loss because I
did not hav eth eexpoerience to recover, no concepts or commands. Ok
as long as you dont mind a reinstall. (I did not).

>     the sudo command will start you a new shell with root permissions,
>     where you have the ability to delete your entire filesystem, modify
>     critical system files, etc. Your normal access level will prevent
>     you from doing such things. Think of it as your normal id being a
>     restricted user and the root user is your administrator account.
> 
> 
> i have been reading in the community docs about volume permissions.  is
> there a way to set just my account (the only account for now)

In truth there are already two accounts - yours the user account,
which is already special because it *allows* sudo  to be used - and -
a root account. Adding more user accounts will not add these with the
sudo use. In K/Ubuntu the root account is deliberately initially
disabled to offer the usual enhanced security. It can be enabled,
however, you will be advised to resist the temptation just yet. And
the more experience you get, the less will be the urge to enable it. I
know. I am 3 years into linux and the only times I had to reinstall
after screw ups was when I had used root powers and been ambitious
beyond my very limited knowledge. But I did not mind at all, my data
was  safe and I could reinstall fast - in windows I used to reinstall
anyway (!). So consider the options, but in groups such as this the
advice on the street is  - avoid root.

Your disk mounting question may be better understood if you can copy
and paste your file contents
/etc/fstab
here, because more experienced eyes can interpret it maybe.

btw typing man fstab into a terminal should give some formal
information about it generally

> with
> administrative permissions n the second hdd so i can use the graphic
> interface rather than the terminal (i guess i'm lazy)?
> 
> i have some directories i want to copy (d&d) to that drive and under the
> current configuration i can't.  don't have the permission (sigh).

The contents of fstab will have  a lot to do with what will happen and
how easy it is.
-- 
ac