problem with chmod

[Derek Broughton]

Bret Busby wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Apr 2009, Thorny wrote:
> 
> If I use
> mkdir /debian_home /data
> , will that not create sub-directories within my home directory, rather
> than the partitions being mounted as partitions?

No, absolutely not.  You need to learn the fundamentals of the Unix file
system structure.  Directories in your home directory would be addressed
as "~/dir", "/home/$USER/dir" or even "dir", but "/" always refers to the
_root_ directory.

> From what I understand, the partitions, being partitions, would need to,
> if I need to use mkdir to create mountpoints for them, be set up as
> mkdir /mnt/debian_home /mnt/data .
>
> Is that wrong?

Very.  I would never mount _anything_ from fstab at /mnt.  It doesn't really
matter, but it's a non-standard mount point, and nothing will find files
there under normal circumstances.
> 
> Oh, and, with the actions that I have gone through, in trying to deal
> with this, I have activated the root account, so that, whilst Ubuntu
> has some deviations from what I understand to be Linux standards (eg,
> using UUID's rather than device paths, in fstab),

That's not in any sense a deviation from "Linux standards", and deviating
from _that_ is at your own peril.

> I can now use the root 
> account for system maintenance, rather than sudo (which I really do not
> like, and regard as a security risk),

For heaven's sake - you don't understand the very basic details of mounting
a file system and think you understand what's a security risk? Again,
deviating from the default is entirely at your own peril.  You can like
sudo or not, but it's far from a security risk.

Since the spurious mention of activating root has nothing at all to do with
the question at hand anyway, I'd have to guess you're just trolling.
-- 
derek