Why do i have locked folders?

[Keiran420]

if linux is an open source os, why do i have several locked folders like 'boot' and 'news'?

[nature]

hi,
"locked folders"....do you mean you do not have permissions on the folder or anything else?

[kavalakala]

If you mean you don't have permission to access everything, it's the way Linux works. You don't have to have access to everything except your home directory as normal user.

Don't except that Linux is Windows, where normal users have access to almost everything.

And "Open Source" is completely different term. It means the source code of the binaries is freely available.

[Craige]

They are locked for security. You can access them from your root user. The point behind that is so nomal users can't **** something up by accident.

And OpenSource does mean having access to the source of it's binarys, which you do. They are publicly availiable.

[kavalakala]

The point behind that is so nomal users can,t **** something up by accident.

Yes. And the bigger point is that Linux is designed to be a multiuser, not only personal system. If you had a system and you gave an account to someone, would you like if that user messed the whole system up if he had access to everything?

[Keiran420]

But its my computer with me being the only user, how do i set my access level to the highest one?

[DThor]

Read Craige's post. You can access all files by becoming root, who's password you set when you installed the system. Don't run as root all the time, only when you absolutely have to(such as when installing software or changing major system configuration).

You do this by entering:

su -

and then enter the root password you set.

DT

[Cabhan]

It is, as has been said, safer to have both a root account and a normal account, even when you are the only user. If your normal user downloads malicious code somehow, or executes some disastrous command, it will only affect him, leaving most of your settings and applications intact. Whereas running it as root will wipe out everything on your computer.

I don't know what distro you run, but if you run Ubuntu, you will need to use sudo in order to act as root. You do this by:

sudo <command here>

you will need to enter your password if you have not done so within the past 15 minutes (I think that's the time limit).

[kavalakala]

Indeed, do as DThor and Cabhan said and not run as root all the time. It really makes your system insecure.
There is no straight way to raise your access level.

And when you asked how to set permissions, it is done via chmod.

[Keiran420]

grr, i cant seem to do it, and there are two folders in my home directory that i dont have permission to delete

im running suse 9.3