i did'nt know that

[bikku]

recently i have installed fedora13 on my laptop
okey and when i logged on i t provides two option first with user name and second with other
so what is tha purpose of other option




also,when i go to mycomputer \ file system then at that point i found that there is cross[x] mark on root folder why this is so.

[GMorris]

I just wrote a post, and had logged in and all, but apparently the system logged me out and it didn't go through.

Basically, the only way to access the root folder is while you are logged in as root. I can't log in to X using "other" and trying root, but I CAN log in to a terminal or terminal window as root. Linux does not like root to be in X, but it can be accomplished if you change the run level to text term only, log in as root, then start X manually. If you want access to the root folder from another account, you will have to log in as root and change the folder permissions. I would not do this unless I had a really good reason to.

Bottom line is, you can't access the root folder unless you ARE root. I wish that last post had gone through!

[nujinini]

recently i have installed fedora13 on my laptop
okey and when i logged on i t provides two option first with user name and second with other so what is tha purpose of other option

So that if others would use your laptop/pc, they don't have to use your account but they can use the "guest" account

also,when i go to mycomputer \ file system then at that point i found that there is cross[x] mark on root folder why this is so.

X on a folder mean that you can't just open this folder.

Now, i'm not really sure if you can change permissions on these folders but I think if its "root" you can't open it. But then again I defer to the wisdom of the gurus.

[PTrenholme]

First, you should be aware that Fedora 13 has only a few months of remaining supported life since the Fedora project attempts to release a new version every six months, and supports only the two latest releases. (Fedora 14 is the latest release, three months old now.)

The point in the permission settings is that Linux is modeled on UNIX, and is POSIX compliant with the UNIX standard. UNIX is designed as a multiuser system, with a few administrators who maintain the system, and many users who each use the system. Users each have their own set of files, and no user's files are available to any other user unless the user that owns the file permits that access. (There are also user groups, and access can be set to each group.) Application binaries are shared by all users, but not the data used by the application if that data is not the same for everyone.

Only administrators are allowed to install or change applications and only they can access all files on the system. Thus a normal user cannot access anything in /root (since that directory is reserved for administrators) and a normal user is not permitted to change anything in most of the files not in their home directory. (The can often read those files, but not change the file's contents.)

This security model is one of the reasons that there are few "exploits" of Linux systems. (If you access the Internet when you are acting as "root," you expose your system to abuse. That's why login as root to a GUI is strongly discouraged.)

That being said, since it's your system, you can start a terminal session, change you login to root (with the su command), and change the permissions (chmod) on any file to be anything you want. This is not recommended, but you can do whatever you want to do with your own system.