Root login - is it OK?

[patjr]

please don't flam me.
puppy is very cool it liks my laptop and my laptop seems to like it, maybe some power controls will help but for now it's all AC from the wall.

I have a few questions I was hoping I could ask?

Is it OK to be loged in as root all the time? Should I make a user account and log in as that? If so how? Oh, yea, I have puppy 3.01 installed on the hd as a dual boot with XP home (hay! it came with the laptop!)

It seems a bit odd to have applications installing in /root did I screw something up? How cool will it be install tgz off of Slackware 12! VERY!

Why is my Seamonkey so old 1.1.2 ? can I update it from Mozilla or should I wait until I can use a pet ?

Is there some way to update the system like in fedora or ubuntu? As a side, 7.10 sure is giving ubuntu users a test of faith.

Thanks for any tips. Puppy sure is FAST!

Pat Jr

[jonyo]

Nice job & welcome! I'm still running pup live cd with save files & haven't figured out other installs.. not that i've tried it much.

I'm mostly in 2.15 & most folks run in root here. Not sure what's going on with higher vers. Dunno about fedora but pup doesn't update like ubuntu. Better that you have xp & not vista (oops..i'm in trouble now) in this forum. Last I heard there was a bug in seamonkey (but the expert left the building ) in pup vers 3 & the solution was to upgrade it to the latest vers.

Pup's very diff from others & will take some time to adjust but certainly loves to go for fast runs.

What type power control problems are u having?

Flaming is not allowed here. You'll see.

[SirDuncan]

Puppy is designed to run as root, so there is no problem. As for safety, well, it is slightly safer to use an account that does not have administrative privileges, but Puppy's X server is not configured to run without root access. There are a few Puppy derivatives with a fully functional multi-user setup. The first one that comes to mind is GrafPup. The next Community Edition (whenever it comes out) may also have a multi-user setup.

One of the main things that having other users protects you against is stupid (or just inexperienced) users by not letting them have access to the system files. Puppy can be restored so quickly and easily, this isn't really an issue. I'm sure that other people can tell you more than I about this, though.

Many people install Firefox or Opera instead of using Seamonkey, but there is no reason why you can't update it if you want to. I know someone on the forum was talking about having done so.

I also run Puppy on a laptop. I had tried to compile some power utilities, but the number of dependencies was just too much. Of course, that was before we had Slackware compatibility, so getting the dependencies might be easier now.

Somewhere I had seen a thread where they had figured out how to hibernate the computer, but I can't remember how right now.

If you use IceWM instead of JWM, you can get a nice little power meter on just like the one in XP (okay, it's not just like it, but it's close enough). Open "/root/.icewm/preferences" in a text editor. Now just change these lines:

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#  Show APM status on task bar
TaskBarShowAPMStatus=0 # 0/1

#  Show APM status on task bar in time-format
TaskBarShowAPMTime=0 # 0/1

to:

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#  Show APM status on task bar
TaskBarShowAPMStatus=1 # 0/1

#  Show APM status on task bar in time-format
TaskBarShowAPMTime=1 # 0/1

Now open "/etc/rc.d/rc.local" and add the lines:

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# load battery module
modprobe battery

Now restart and you should see it down near your clock.

That will only work in IceWM. I strongly suggest IceWM if your machine can handle it (and anything that can run XP can). You can get it and a bunch of cool icons and themes in EZpup http://puppylinux.org/wikka/EZpup.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask, someone here probably knows the answer.

Oh, one more thing. My experience with the 3.0x series is that they are a little buggy still. I'm sticking with 2.17 until Barry gets 3.03 out. He is supposed to have most of the bugs worked out by then.

[jonyo]

As a side, 7.10 sure is giving ubuntu users a test of faith.

Messed with 7.04 (& many others) for a bit but after pup, everything else felt like sloow motion so mostly on pup these days.

My understanding is the latest lin-freespire is also testing the faithful..

[Bruce B]

Is there some way to update the system like in fedora or ubuntu? As a side, 7.10 sure is giving ubuntu users a test of faith.
Pat Jr

Welcome!

Was it mentioned you can password protect root account as well as force a root login?

I'd really appreciate it if you would elaborate on what you meant by your ubuntu comment!

[patjr]

Thank for the very speedy replies.

Since my laptop is currently plugged into the wall power is no problem, I am thinking of when it's "un tethered" as the cell phone folks say. That's rare for me anyway, but it is nice to have it available, the cup speed, power meters, battery level, stuff like that. Looks like IceWM is a good tip, Thank You. Now I have to look up how to install it and switch DE with gdm, xdm, or kdm session. I know it's possible, i just have to find a "HOW TO" so I edit the right file correctly.

My ubuntu comment is referring to problems 7.10 is giving many users, me included, in upgrading or installing. My laptop, this one, did not like it at all. Regular or Alt flavors. I think it is mostly the Xorg, just a guess. Speaking of which, puppy sure has some GOOD hardware detection. Put my synaptic touchpad in with no problem.

I hope I didn't offend anyone on the SeaMonkey thing, I think it's great even though I am an Opera fan. It'll be on here shortly but SeaMonkey is growing on me quickly. I can't say why but I am not an FF fan?

I have a Nokia e62 I got for "free" with my cell phone plan, I sure do wish puppy would run on that!

Thanks Again for your help.
Pat Jr

[Lobster]

If you are a desktop user with a secure pc (you know who has access to it - usually you) you are fine

Put the firewall wizard on. Security done.
I have noticed some web sites try to use javascript to do something or other. No idea what.
If I cared I would reboot and turn off javascript or indeed press ctrl + alt + backspace and type xwin (restart the xserver)
If I was interested I might try and find out what they are trying to do . . .

try typing

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top

in the console to see what is running if you feel something is running that should not be

People repeat the memes mantra "do not run as root"
yet we do
when I hear of the consequences I will listen
So far all I hear is the memes mantra repetition

Some are still using Windows safely (not sure how they manage that)

for those who feel they need more . . .
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Security

The answer to your question is Yes it is OK

[Bruce B]

I hope I didn't offend anyone on the SeaMonkey thing, I think it's great even though I am an Opera fan. It'll be on here shortly but SeaMonkey is growing on me quickly. I can't say why but I am not an FF fan?

Offense? I doubt it. I also think it is somewhat requisite that all people who participate in forums have a little thickness of skin and tolerance for other's viewpoints. Do you want to walk on eggshells? I don't. Neither do I want others to feel they should.

About SeaMonkey

I think there was a version of mozilla available for DOS users. Can anyone verify this?

I started using Netscape with Windows 3.11, using the win32s (spelling?) software, which allows some 32 bit applications run on the 16 bit platform.

Then Microsoft wanted to dominate the browser market. For one thing, I didn't think IE version 2 or 3 or whatever it was even came close to Netscape as a browser. Also, my sense of fair mindedness resented the very idea that Netscape must be crushed. I stubbornly continued to use only Netscape or Opera as a registered user until just a couple years ago.

To make a long story shorter, much shorter, I feel very at home with SeaMonkey, in a sense it has always been my preferred browser in various iterations.

Truthfully, I felt sorta hurt, as in suffering a sense of loss, when mozilla.org decided to stop its development of the Mozilla Suite.

Fortunately, as it worked out we have enough developers who liked Mozilla to keep it alive and under active development under the name of SeaMonkey.

I dropped any affinity I had for Firefox when it dropped the feature to display images at full size or fit to screen.

Recently, I found that a person can show images at full size by toggling the preference name below from true to false. For this reason, I have both SeaMonkey and Firefox installed.

browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing

In spite of all the aforementioned, it could be Opera is the best coded of all the browsers. I base this mostly on its size, speed and respectable range of features.

For me, being a creature of habit, most of the time I'm running SeaMonkey.

[patjr]

must have hit the EZ button
all I had to do to update my SeaMonkey was, dl, unzip, rename 1.1.2 dir to XXX and mkdir 1.1.2 and copy all the 1.1.5 stuff to that dir, all done, well I still need to sweep up but it looks like it's working

That was EZ!

I found a tip here or someplace in the newbie stuff for the power monitor wmpower and doing modprob battery to find the battery.

me sleepy, bye for now,
Pat Jr

[Ian]

As far as using root to go on the internet in Puppy I have never had any problems security-wise (as I have stated before).

I have used Linux on my network, that ran behind a Linux firewall,since 1998 and Puppy for the last few years behind a firewall supplied by my IP provider (wireless) and have never had problems with viruses or intrusions.

Even running Puppy from an install on machines that have no firewalls ( these are remote from my site) has not caused any problems that I can find. This includes running from the live disk to a HD install.

Maybe if Linux desktop usage starts to approach Apple's share of the market there most probably will arise a cult of crackers trying to attack Linux in the same way that MSWindows is attacked at the moment, to this I say:

Good luck to them!

[Bruce B]

{text cut}

Maybe if Linux desktop usage starts to approach Apple's share of the market there most probably will arise a cult of crackers trying to attack Linux in the same way that MSWindows is attacked at the moment, to this I say:

Good luck to them!

Well now, according to a Microsoft spokesperson:

--------------

Forget that. Linux was born, raised, and developed on the Internet. The Internet being the hostile network that has plagued Microsoft for so long. This very same potentially hostile Internet is still the place where Linux is still developing, improving and distributed.

It seems to me that not only does Linux survive the Internet rather unscathed, it thrives on it.

Yup, like you said: Good luck to them!

[disciple]

Running as root is perfectly safe provided you are behind a router or set up a firewall, if you are sure no-one will do anything stupid like I did the other day. I was trying to improve the Trash roxapp again and I did something wrong and deleted the entire contents of my pup_save

Not sure exactly what you mean when you want to know about updating the system, but whenever you get a new version of Puppy you can upgrade - all your old settings and stuff should be carried through.