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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