ChadDavis wrote: > 'dude' ? is that me? I do know what runlevels, sudo and su are. As < snip > >> >> The first thing 'dude' needs to do is figure out what runlevels, >> single-user mode, and 'sudo' or 'su to root' are! >> >> Michael >> http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/runlevels.htm.
runlevel 1 is single-user mode, not non-gui mode. On a standalone machine, it's useful for (as was explained earlier) fixing configuration files, compiling programs (without the overhead of X), or performing any computationally intensive task which doesn't require X. The power of the command line is the beauty of Unix and Unix-like systems. From; http://aplawrence.com/Basics/sudo.html "First a little background. The sudo program itself is a setuid binary. If you examine its permissions, you will see: ---s--x--x 1 root root 81644 Jan 14 15:36 /usr/bin/sudo That "s" means that this is a "setuid" program. You and everyone else have execute permission on this, so you can run it. When you do that, because it is setuid and owned by root, your effective user id becomes root- if you could get to a shell from sudo, you effectively WOULD be root- you could remove any file on the system, etc. That's why setuid programs have to be carefully written, and something like sudo (which is going to allow access to other programs) has to be especially careful. A setuid program doesn't necessarily mean root access. A setuid program owned by a different user would give you that user's effective id. The sudo program can also change your effective id while it is running- I'll be showing an example of that here." And; http://www.iodynamics.com/education/root101.html Since it is the aim of millions of people worldwide to get 'root' on 'your' machine, it is a privilege not taken lightly in our community. I understand that your original question was about run levels and I hope the above URL made it a little clearer. My greater concern is that you have an appreciation for the power provided by the 'root' prompt and develop the skills necessary to avoid abusing it. We live in an algorithmically dangerous world somewhat provoked by the swiss cheese that is Windows. If one new linux (or BSD, or Solaris) user would take the time to learn the safe methods to elevate privileges and pass that information on, maybe one day we could drop most of these complicated security tools (and paranoia). Just my 2 cents, Michael -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
