Permissions and other questions..

[Bill Moran]

Killermink ! wrote:
> These may be immensly stupid questions, but here goes anyway, I have put 
> them all into one mail as I don't think they singularily deserve a whole 
> mail...

For future reference, this is the wrong way to ask questions.  In the
future, put one question per email and you'll get more answers faster
(and put a good subject line for each question)  See:
http://www.lemis.com/questions.html

> 1) Is it desirable and how do you enable certain processes to be run in 
> a user account?
> 
> Here is why, I am the only user of my machine and while I realise the 
> importance of root, if i want to mount a cd I always have to su.  This 
> is the same for other processes such as ifconfig.  As the only user I 
> don't want to have to su all the time to do simple things, and as not 
> being used to it, I sometimes forget I have done so and do things 
> undesirable (e.,g. startx as root).

You say "certain processes" and then you describe mounting drives.  I'm
going to assume that you're asking about mounting drives.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/disks.html#USER-FLOPPYMOUNT

> 2) Is there a way to automount?  Like when I put in a CD or attach my 
> USB drive.. as they have the same command each time.

Yes.  Look in the ports for the automounter daemon.  I think you actually
have multiple choices.

> 3) Is it possible to have the command prompt tell you what directory you 
> are in before the symbol?
> 
> Like /usr/home/whoever# cd music
>      /usr/home/whoever/music#

Certainly.  But it depends on what shell you're using.  If you're using
bash or sh (for example) you can edit the .shrc file in your home directory
and change the PS1= setting.  This file has a useful example in it, and
more information is available in the man pages.

Other shells have different methods for setting the prompt.  See the docs
for the shell you're using.

> 4) Is there a way in XFCE to create a launcher for OpenOffice?  I 
> understand it needs to be run with ./soffice but this doesn't work even 
> tho I have added the directory to my PATH

I'm sure there is, but I don't know xfce well enough to say what.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com