ENABLE ROOT PARTITION R/W ACCESS WITHOUT PASSWORD

[4joey1]

Hallo!I have used openSUSE 10.3 for a year now.

For me to edit a file that’s within the root partition e.g. /etc/fstab , I am forced to log in as super user via File System Manager-Super User mode.I would like to copy my files to or edit files in my root partition without having to log in to my root partition as a super user so that it will be as easy to have read-write access to my root partition just like in my home partition.

How can I achieve this?Please respond soon.Thanks in advance.

[Akoellh]

You don't and that's a **** good thing, too.

Giving a normal user full access to "root-only" files is not a security hole, it's more like a "security crater", 2000 km diameter and 50 km deep.

[BenderBendingRodriguez]

If there would be any malware then nothing would stop it from attaching/patching some system files just because you had read/write access.

This is unthinkable. Normally if anything would happen to your pc then it would only be files on your home partition. And it should stay like that always.

Anyway how often do you need to write anything on a root partition?? It's not like you leave files there do you?

[4joey1]

Hallo!I have used openSUSE 10.3 for a year now.

For me to edit a file that’s within the root partition e.g. /etc/fstab , I am forced to log in as super user via File System Manager-Super User mode.I would like to copy my files to or edit files in my root partition without having to log in to my root partition as a super user so that it will be as easy to have read-write access to my root partition just like in my home partition?

I am aware of the security merits of a password controlled root partition has but my problem is as follows.

I have a very small home partition (only 1 GB) since my machine has both openSUSE 10.3 and Windows and my HDD drive is only 80GB.

My root partition has 5 GB free space

I would like to install software e.g. Oracle for Linux.Naturally I would want it to be installed on my freer root partition but during installation its default installation path is in the home partition.If I try to change the path to a root partition,I get the error message that I do not have rights to place my files on the root partition.Of course when I try to install in the default home partition,I get the error message disk full.

How thus can I install software from root partition?Please respond soon.Thanks in advance.

[caf4926]

You have already had correct advice. Don't ignore it.
It's possible you could shrink root a little to expand /home
use the partitioner in Yast

If in doubt
post a screenshot of what you see there

or at the very least the su output of:

fdisk -l

[swerdna]

@caf4926 -- not while mounted

It's possible you could shrink root a little to expand /home
use the partitioner in Yast

[caf4926]

Originally Posted by swerdna

@caf4926 -- not while mounted

quite correct @swerdna
maybe a live cd or parted magic?

[BenderBendingRodriguez]

If you want to install something in root partition then you must run it with root privileges. Otherwise good software/installer will try to install it in /home where it has write permissions.

[ken_yap]

Originally Posted by caf4926

quite correct @swerdna
maybe a live cd or parted magic?

No, you were right the first time. fdisk -l is ok while filesystems are mounted, all it does is read and display the partition table. Modification is another matter though.

[hcvv]

Hello 4joey1,

In addition to all the good advice given above I might throw in some remarks, because my idea is that you have some misconseptions. When I am wrong, I do appoligize.

The root partition has nothing to do with the user root (except for their shared name). The root partition is the disk partition that is mounted on /. And that is at the root of the Unix/Linux directory tree. You do not need a password to read and/or write there.

You do need the root password when you want to access directories/files that are not owned by you, but by root (and root not giving the allowance to do the r/w by e.g. setting the access bits for 'world').

Now when you have a seperate /home partition, most directories/files that are on the / filesystem are owned by root and not writable by normal users. This is because of ownership and access bits, not because of them being on the root filesystem.

Back to your problem.
I understand that your /home partition is getting full, but that your / partition is still having space enough. Apart from the tedious task of shrinking/expanding filesystems, a (maybe only temporary) solution might be found by using space on / for part of your user files and making a symbolic link to it.

Example. User happy is running out of space and gathers a lot of music file in /home/happy/Music/. We want to move this to the root partition so that more music can be added and also more space for others things becomes available on /home/happy/.

As root create a directory on the root partition and make happy the owner:

mkdir /happy-needs-more-space
chown happy:users /happyneeds-more-space

Now happy can do:

cd                       # to your home directory
mv Music /happy-needs-more-space/  #takes some time because it will copy all music
ln -s /happy-needs-more-space/Music Music  #makes the link from your well know place to where it is now

And happy is back into bussiness.

I hope you get the principle behind it. Of course after this your root partition does contain userdata and this should be taken into acount when installing a new system.