File Permissions/Ownership

Hello all,

First I want to say thank you for admitting me to Zorin OS Forums, I'm a newby to Zorin OS, and as with any OS newly installed, I need to take ownership of the file system. Certain OS's I could merely go into the root file system and change ownership of all file by opening the Home file up as root, then go from their. But to my dismay, there are no or is no way of doing this in Zorin, I've gone through synaptic to try and install whatever files which would give give me the ability to take ownership.

This is also done by going into the etc/samba.conf file and doing modifications to it, but again, without root privileges, I can't do this. Is there any files that I can get from synaptic that would allow me these privileges.....this is important to me for not only changing permissions of the file system, but to be able to share files as well, and to open the network and click on any given file from another computer running Zorin OS......this needs to be done in both version 8 and 6.4LTS....as I have both.....3 machines total on a wireless network.

Thank you in advance for your help, and again, thank you for admitting me to Zorin Forums

Andrew

Hi Andrew, I think that a lot of systems are trying to be as secure as possible which is good in one respect but not so good for people like you and me who like to be in control of their OS - after all that's what GNU/Linux is supposed to be all about no?

The only way I have been able to take ownership is to use the old 'chown' (change ownership) command which I 'think' is only temporary while you make adjustments.

So for example I recently had to get a new router and it uses 'WPS' which can be a pain to get working - I have had to resort to using a 'guest' setting on the router to connect my dongle. I have been trying to add a '.conf' file in etc based on what I have found whilst searching the 'net for WPS on GNU/Linux - unfortunate that it is also the abbreviation for Kingsoft Office!

So what I had to do was:

Code:

cd ..

(changes to /home)

Code:

cd ...

(to get to '/' file system)

then

Code:

dir

[just to make sure I can see all the directories in '/' and I am at the right place - I needed to see 'etc'

To take ownership:

Code:

sudo chown [your username that you login with] etc

You will be asked for your password to elevate to root priveleges.

Keep us posted!

Thank you Swarfendor347.....I'll check this out, get it a whirl.....and I'll get back to you to let you know how things went.

Andrew

Okay, I'm now in control and ownership of my files on all 3 machines....thank you Swarfendor347. I've also copied these instructions to text editor for future reference. I've also edited the smb.conf file with all pertenent info for the network, but now just trying to get the manchines to be able to go into each others file systems....I can see them from my laptop (all 3), but from the other 2 desktops, I can only see the named network, but can't access it to see all 3 on the network like I can with my laptop.

Are there any other tips or suggestion you could possibly give that would help with this.....so as to write down, and if it works, can pass on to others who may be suffering the same issue.....thank you for your help

Andrew

No worries friend - this is what I like about community OS's!

I would first off look at seeing if their is a 'public folder' present (I am sure there used to be on in users /home in Zorin 7) and make this shareable - guess you could always create a 'public' folder and make it 'read-writeable' in permissions - this might be the way forward to share items.

With regards the networking issue I would take a close look at CIFS within Samba - do a search using DuckDuckGo! for Ubuntu 13.10 and accessing files over a network - lunch close to ending!