Root user

[Peter Garrett]

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:20:00 -0500
Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:

> > One example is change the owner of a folder that belongs to root to my user
> > without using the root account!

there are usually *very* good reasons why the "folder" belongs to root :)

Be careful doing this unless you understand the consequences!

Generally speaking almost any directory ( folder) outside your personal
home directory (  /home/your-user-name ) will belong to root, except the
home directories of other users  ( /home/someone-else )

There are exceptions, for instance /var/www might be owned by "apache" or
"www-data" 

For example a home directory:

$ ls -ld /home/peter
drwxr-xr-x 138 peter peter 8192 2007-01-26 04:51 /home/peter

Even /tmp belongs to root, although you can write to it:

$ ls -ld /tmp/
drwxrwxrwt 11 root root 4096 2007-01-26 05:51 /tmp/

The "t" in that is the "sticky bit" which makes sure no other user can
clobber your /tmp files by over-writing them ;)

d= directory  r = read w = write x = execute or open ( for directories/
folders) t = sticky as above

See for instance

http://krnlpanic.com/tutorials/permissions.php

Peter