Re: a question from beginner

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, July 16, 2001 at 23:57:13 (+0300), Alexander P. Plakidin wrote: ]
> Subject: a question from beginner
>
> The problem is:
> # cvs commit advertise.php3
> cvs [commit aborted]: cannot commit files as 'root'
> 
> I am not sure what I should do... Should I be logged in as other
> user? I tried, but the same command results in a "permission denied"
> error. Please help me.

Yes, you should only ever use CVS when logged in as a normal user.

Of course you should make sure all the working files are accessible by
the account you login as.  I'll bet that "advertise.php3" is currently
owned by root, may be readable only by root, and that the working
directory it's in is also owned by root.

First "chown -R user" the working directory, then login as the user,
then continue with CVS....

In fact you should endeavour to do everything possible as a normal user
and only ever 'su' to root when absolutely necessary for specific
systems administration tasks, and you should exit from the root shell
immediately after you finish such a task (or at least minimize the
window, but don't forget it's there -- never leave it unattended!).
It's not called the "superuser" account for no reason!  If you use the
system normally as 'root' then you may as well just use some single-user
system with no security -- since as root you have no security against
even your own mistakes!

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

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