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On Friday 11 May 2007 08:25, Simon Williams wrote: > > > Use sudo again Christopher. > > sudo gedit /etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf > > You can't do that. Graphical applications cannot be run by root (well, > they could be, if you start an X server as root- which is even more of a > no no)- the X server belongs to your user. And rightly so. Learn a > simple command line editor- if you ever really mess up your system that > will be essential anyway. Of course you can run stuff with sudo. Not always a sensible idea, but it can be done. Not being a Gnome user myself, I sort of assumed gedit was like nano or vi - i.e run from a command line, so perhaps that is why my comment seemed odd. But for KDE users for example, running "kdesu konqueror" will bring up a root konqueror window - I believe "gksu nautilus" does a similar trick in Gnome. Agreed, running as root is not always the best option, but it does have its uses at times - especially on those files with root permissions. > > Basically, most files other than those in your /home directory are owned > > by "root". So, you need to have root priveliges to edit them - thats what > > sudo does, it gives your username temporary root priveliges. > > Why does everyone always suggest sudo? If you've got 3 commands to run > as root, you don't want to type the password every time. Use su. Now you > have a root shell. Run the 3 commands, then type exit. > > Please rebuke me where necessary. > Hope this is of some help. > Simon Because it is a quick way to temporarily get root. The Ubuntu systems don't enable a root login by default, unlike many other distros, so sudo is the way to do things. Running su - unless you have set up a root account - will simply not work. You would get an authentication error. This applies to the Ubuntu family only - other distros use su Mark -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html