[Techtalk] "I need to use Windows because ..."

[/dev/null]

hi,

sorry if i confused you...

you need to cd to the directory containing the OpenOffice binary... i believe 
it unpacks itself into /usr/bin ... its a while since i've done this 
though....
look for a binary called soffice - i think its actually inside a directory 
called soffice (just to be really confusing)... 

by the way, you'll need to be root to do this, so first type su and enter your 
password...

once you've found the soffice binary then type
chmod 4755 soffice 
(trust me those are the right numbers ;-)

chmod changes the permissions of a file... there's a good explaination at 
http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/Filesystems/File_Permissions.html

when you find the binary, try typing 'ls -al' first, and have a look at the 
results, you should see something a bit like 

miriam at hamish miriam]$ ls -al
total 17464
drwxr-xr-x   74 miriam   miriam       8192 Aug 10 21:17 ./
drwxr-xr-x    4 root     root         4096 Jun 16 02:25 ../
drwx------    2 miriam   miriam       4096 Jun 20 13:17 .AbiSuite/
drwxr-xr-x    4 miriam   miriam       4096 May 14 01:40 alsaconfig-tp_files/
drwxr-xr-x    6 miriam   miriam       4096 Jun 15 01:51 amSynth/
-rwxr-xr-x    1 miriam   miriam         38 Aug  4 02:58 assignment2.py*

these are just some of my files... note the star beside 'assignment2.py' - 
this indicates that its executable (i.e. a program)... your soffice binary 
should have one of those too (and if you're using a Gnome terminal the 
programs will be green).

okay, tell me to shut up if i'm telling grandmother to suck eggs now... or 
just skip this bit ;-)

the stuff on the left that says drwxr-xr-x and all that tells you the 
permissions of the group. the name next to it tell you who owns the program 
and which group it belongs to... so the first line says that this directory 
i'm in, or ./ is owned by me, but the directory above this one, or ../ is 
owned by root.

the permissions split into four sections:

d  rwx   r-x   r-x

the d stands for directory - if you see a slash instead of this, that means 
this bit is blank - i.e. its a file. sometimes you'll see other stuff like s, 
dont worry about this for now.

the next segment of three letters is the permissions for the owner, the 
following three for the group, and the final three for any other users. 
the soffice binary permissions probably should look like 
-rwxr-xr-x 
but at a guess, i think it must be saying
-rwx-r--r--

r stands for read, w stands for write, and x stands for execute. so if you 
want to allow your groups and users to execute a program, you need to do 
'chmod + x myProgram'.

the numbers are just a substitute for typing long strings.... usually you'd 
just use three numbers, for user, group and other - i.e. chmod 755 myProgram.

its binary code - 
4 stands for r
2 stands for w
1 stands for x

so the 7 is made by adding up 4+2+1 - so that means rwx (read write and 
execute)
and the 5 is made from 4+1 - so that means r-x (read and execute only - 
because you dont always want to allow a group to overwrite your programs!)

there's a wonderful explaination of this by Marcel Gagne, who writes for 
LinuxJournal - i have his book Linux Systems Administration, and i'd highly 
reccomend it for anyone learning Linux or sysadminning - or just for a good 
read, it is *sooooo* funny! he's a really witty writer - which means its all 
the more memorable and easier to read.

i cant seem to find his article on permissions on linuxjournal.com, but it 
might be there somewhere... all of his articles are well worth reading, he 
explains things so clearly (oh, and if you havent read him before... he 
pretends he's a chef....!)

hope this helps, do ask more if you need to :-)
bw
miriam 



On Saturday 10 August 2002 22:16, Suzi Anvin wrote:
> Nope, I'm an utter and total newbie.  It's still in greek to me.  Let me
> try to get clearer on what I need to do...
>
> /dev/null wrote:
> > ok.... just cd to the directory and type
>
> which directory?
>
> > chmod 4755 my_binary
> >
> > hope that works okay...
> > you probably know chmod 755 well but the 4 in front of it allows it to be
> > run as if you were root, even though you're logged in as a normal user :)
>
> never encountered chmod at all, let alone know what chmod 755 means.
> What is this, what does it do, am I changing something in my user
> abilities, my directory, or the open office stuff?
>
> > hth
> > m

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