Newbie Questions

[mss]

Hi,
Ok I am very new to Debian and Linux all together. I have a couple of questions.
First I should mention that I am only using the bash and have not yet installed xfce or kde or gnome as I am trying to learn linux commands.

I am trying to see who the users and groups are that have an account on a machine and also which group has access to what directory etc., How do I do that?

Also when I am logged as a regular user how can I find out what permissions do I have on some directorys? ie. on the /sbin/ I see that public has rx but I can't execute any programs such as ifconfig even though both on the directory sbin and file sbin I have rx access? I also changed directory permission and file permission for sbin and ifconfig to 777 but I still could not execute ifconfig as a regular user. What is the reason for this and how can I fix it?

Is there a way to give a user who is in group Semi_admin access to certain files and directories and enable him to start or stop some services?

How do you add a user to a group?

Many thanks

Newbie Linux user

[genesus]

usermod -G group1,group2,group3,&c username

as root of course

man usermod for other info, it can mod all info for a user

[rcgreen]

but I still could not execute ifconfig as a regular user

You can if you explicitly name it /sbin/ifconfig. This will make more sense
after you familiarize yourself with the concept of PATH

http://www.tdl.com/~netex/linux-doc-...e/node152.html