Permissions and other questions..

[Richard Bradley]

> 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...

I don't know about stupid - these are quite sensible questions. Lazy perhaps 
-- most of these can be answered by google (or by experimentation).

> 1) Is it desirable and how do you enable certain processes to be run in a 
> user account?

You can use `su` as root - in fact you can su into any account without using a 
password, such is the power of root ;-)

> 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).

How often do you need to run ifconfig? If you manage to get automount working 
(see below) you should have no excuse not to run as a normal user

> 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.

umm - I'm not going to answer this one. The simple answer is that the very 
first result for a google search on "automount freebsd" gives a detailed 
tutorial on how to set this up on a FreeBSD box. Searching is quicker than 
waiting for email replies, you know.

> 3) Is it possible to have the command prompt tell you what directory you are
> in before the symbol?

Again, the first result on google for "change prompt string csh" is a long 
tutorial on changing the title bar of xterms or something. Anyway, I skimmed 
through it and to get you started, at your console, type:

alias precmd 'echo -n "$cwd"'

You should be able to customise this to suit your own needs.

> 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 don't even know what XFCE is, so try Google for this one, or wait for 
someone on the mailing list to try Google for you ;-)

> Thanks for the advice...

Have fun!


Rich