Re: [Pan-users] Re: Permissions Re: Aaarrrgghhh! Whahoppena Terminal??

[Gerald L]

Beartooth wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:13:12 +0100, Rhialto wrote:
>
> > On Sun 08 Mar 2009 at 15:32:46 +0000, Beartooth wrote:
> > >         However, trying to do a make install on build_GarminDev, which
> > > contains qlandkarte, I got an error :
> > >
> > > CMake Error at src/cmake_install.cmake:36 (FILE):
> > >   file Problem setting permissions on file
> > >   "/usr/include/garmin/IDevice.h"
> > >
> > >         Fwiw, I did a chown -R on that, and make install ran.
> > >
> > >         What is bothering me is finding permission problems buried way
> > > down deep in new stuff.
> > Well, normally, the installation procedures are run as root (the
> > superuser), who owns /usr/include/ and most other installed files. You
> > can "get around" that by chowning more and more files/directories to
> > make them owned by you, but then you lose the advantage of the different
> > owners. It means you could now do something bad to those files by
> > accident, and not be protected by the lack of permission to do so.
>
> 	Iiuc, the trouble is that I'm swinging too big a hammer. Right? 
> So I ought to chown all of /usr/include back to root -- and then do what 
> about the permission trouble? (I had tried doing make install both as 
> root and as user, and failed with both, though I see I neglected to say 
> so.)
>
> 	I never have been able to get my head around the details of 
> permissions. They're like grub: the concept is plain enough, but every 
> attempt to adjust details (with chmod? or is there a chperm??) gets me 
> snarled up like a bug in a web.

No, don't *keep* blindly chowning files. Unfortunately, what you really 
need to do at this point is

A) start from scratch -- fresh install and move *NOTHING* except data 
files from your home directory to the new install, 
reinstall/recompile/rebuild everything else that uses files outside the 
/home/ tree

OR B) Do a clean install on another machine (none of your data, etc.) 
and then start comparing permissions, file-by-file, and fixing them on 
your current machine.

The part that you need to get your head wrapped around is not the 
permissions themselves. It's the fact that the machine doesn't consider 
*you*, a regular user, to be "God". The only place you should be able to 
do pretty much *anything* when logged in as btth is in /home/btth. If 
you have to do something to the machine that requires files outside that 
tree then you have to *temporarily* become "God" (root) either by 
logging is as root in a terminal or by using "su -".

You pretty much should not be able to do *any* "point and click" things 
because you should never be logged into X as root. If there's a 
graphical command that you want to use then you should open a terminal 
window as root then run the command by hand to make the graphical 
version pop up. Anything that NEEDS to be run as root in X should be set 
up to ask you for the root password if you blindly click while logged in 
as btth (that's what the graphical version of the package manager in 
Debian does when wanting to install new programs or do updates).

Or, live with it and hope nothing breaks badly from here on in. ;-)

Gerald