change permissions to copy pictures into backgrounds

Patrick Asselman iceblink at seti.nl
Wed May 9 06:11:01 UTC 2012


 On Wed, 09 May 2012 00:14:58 +0900, Thomas Blasejewicz wrote:
> (2012/05/08 1:12), Colin Law wrote:
>> On 7 May 2012 17:05, Thomas Blasejewicz<thomas at s7.dion.ne.jp>  
>> wrote:
>>> (2012/05/06 0:26), compdoc wrote:
>>>>> What is the try, that will allow me to do so?
>>>> Not sure I followed everything you were saying, but if you need to 
>>>> copy or
>>>> modify system files, (or root owed files) type into a term window: 
>>>> gksu
>>>> nautilus&
>>>>
>>>> Also useful:  gksu gedit&
>>>>
>>>> Can you just explain very carefully what you are trying to do.  
>>>> Tell
>>>> us where the files are at the moment and where you are trying to 
>>>> copy
>>>> them to.   Don't talk about the "backgrounds" folder, tell us 
>>>> exactly
>>>> where you are trying to copy to.
>>>>
>>>> Colin
> Well, this is really simply.
> I have a folder that contains pictures I took myself and like to use
> as wallpaper for my computers.
> I want (a) either make this folder the DEFAULT location the computer
> is looking for when I instruct it to change the desktop image,
> or (b) to copy my pictures into the ubuntu default folder (if this is
> so difficult to change ...)
>
> my pictures are located in:
> /home/thomas/pictures/wallpapers
> owner: Thomas Blasejewicz
> group: adm
> I changed the permission for ALL pictures to "read and write", but
> that did not help.
>
> the "default folder" for wallpapers appears to be:
> /usr/share/backgrounds
> owner: root
> group: root
>
> * There was the question "why go through all this trouble?" I asked
> myself this very question MANY times!
> Maybe it is this crazy obsession of mine, that if something should be
> very simple but I am still unable to succeed, "I want to know
> (understand) why".
> Apparently I am annoying many people with this attitude.
> Please accept my apologies for that.
> On the other hand, I am likely to continue asking stupid questions
> like this one ...
> Thomas

 It's always good to ask questions :-)

 Part of the answer probably lies in the background of Linux. It is 
 designed as a multi-user system. That is why security of files is always 
 used. Think of a system with 50 users, and 3 of those area allowed to 
 change system settings. You don't want all of those users changing 
 pictures in a shared directory. This is where the ownership of files 
 comes in, and users and user-groups.

 Mind you, this old design is not always handy. Even the founding father 
 of Linux has been pulling his hair out asking why he needed 
 administrator rights to setup a wifi connection on his laptop. But 
 computers are still stupid machines, so the laptop does not know it is 
 only serving a single user who changes only the wifi bit of the network 
 settings. It is in the design of the system.

 With this in mind, hopefully you can understand a bit better why things 
 work the way they do.

 Best regards,
 Patrick Asselman




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