How come I cannot Copy & Drag - "No Write Permission"

[dreamstage7]

During an installation of an Adobe plug-in (for Mozilla Firefox), the directions allowed me to copy script-based files into the Mozilla Plug-ins directory. However, I could not simply click and drag (nor copy and paste) the files there. It said that I could not because I did not have write permission to do so.

The other way involved typing ./flashplayer-installer (once I opened the directory that was created for linux users). However, I got bash errors or no such file or directory found.

Any ideas?

I'm new to linux-bases OS's. Thanks!

[techieMoe]

Linux (and UNIX/BSD) systems do not allow regular users to write to any place other than their /home directory. Likely you were trying to access somewhere like "/usr/local/mozilla/plugins" and you can't do that as a regular user. In order to install things that require write privileges to your system you'll need to log in as root (Administrator) user first. In the case of the install script you would do this from a terminal window:

su <enter>
Password: <enter your root password>
./flash-installer

That will execute the install script as root and you shouldn't get any permissions errors. Be *very* careful when logged in as root, and don't do it often. It not only is a security risk, you can seriously damage your system with the wrong command.