My brain read that in John Oliver’s mocking voice. xD
French or standard?
you’re an idiot Andrew
“I shouldn’t have to use permissions or sudo, just all root all the time”
“Real Men Run As Root”
I don’t run as root because I’ve always been told I shouldn’t. I don’t know enough about anything to be contradicting stuff like this. It has always seemed weird to me that we don’t run as root and then just sudo everything, though.
What is the reason we don’t run as root?
You’re not supposed to “sudo everything” though. It’s mostly for changing the system configuration (editing config files in /etc/, running your system package manager etc.). It shouldn’t be a “oh, I got a permission error, better sudo the same command again olol”
What is the reason we don’t run as root?
We are human and make mistakes. Not running as root means the computer will ask us to confirm when we are about to do something major (like a software update, or formatting a partition). This reduces the chance of making big mistakes. (But I don’t see why VLC shouldn’t be able to run as root, if the user so desires.)
(But I don’t see why VLC shouldn’t be able to run as root, if the user so desires.)
You don’t run VLC as root because you don’t especially trust that build of VLC
We don’t run random stuff as root because it’s a stupid risk. We try to only take necessary risks. Risks that make things easier. Running random programs as root gains you nothing and causes annoyance in that you need to fix permissions on its configuration files if you want to run out as a user
There is nothing stopping you though if you want to set up a Linux machine where you log in as root, run a desktop environment as root, run apps as root. You’re unlikely to be taking an unreasonable risk as a home user.
But I don’t see why VLC shouldn’t be able to run as root, if the user so desires.
For the reasons you described, I won’t run VLC as root, and I don’t think 99% of users would need to. But if someone wanted to do it, the software shouldn’t stop them from doing it (beyond giving a warning and asking them to confirm).
Because you might accidentally do something which breaks the system, or you might run a program which does something malicious without your knowledge.
By gating dangerous (or protected for any other reason) commands behind sudo, you create a barrier which is difficult to accidentally cross
A big part of it comes from the security model and Linux historically being a multi-user environment.
rootowns the root directly/which is where all of the system files live. A normal user just has access to their own home directory/home/usernameand read-only access to things the normal user needs like the/binwhere programs are stored (hence/bin/bashin lots of bash scripts, it tells the script what program to run the script from)Because of this model, a normal user can only mess up their own files, while root can mess up everyone’s files and of course make the system non-bootablem. But also you can have user Bob signed in and doing stuff but unable to access user Alice’s files, and user Alice can be doing stuff and even running the same programs that user Bob is running (since it’s read only there’s no conflict) and then the administrator can log in as
rootto install something because they got a ticket to install suchandsuch for soandso.Back to your point with
sudo,sudois Super User Do, so you are running a single command asroot. By running it as root you can potentially be messing up with Alice and Bob might be doing, and most importantly whatever you are running withsudocan potentially affect any file on the computer. So if you run the classicrm -rf /it will delete every file that the user has write access to, so if bob runs it it’ll delete all of/home/bob/but Alice will be unaffected, and the admin can still log in asrootto do stuff. But if you run it asrootyou’ll quickly find the server unable to boot and both Alice and Bob will be very upset that they can’t access the server or their filesIf you host a website you’ll generally take advantage of this by giving the
wwwfolder read-only access so that web users can only see webpages and can’t start reading random system files, or for server software you can create a dedicated user to run that server software as, so if someone were to somehow exploit a vulnerability and gain access to that server user they can only mess up the software and no system files
Real superuser allow every programs and services run as root
Andrew is ignorant. He could learn the basics of computer literacy, which would answer all his questions, but I’ll take a shot in the dark and say that Andrew doesn’t want to do that and is perfectly happy being ignorant. And also angry.
Never listen to anyone who is perfectly satisfied with being angry at everything.
Words to live by.
He doesn’t exactly come across as happy…
True, his message doesn’t exactly radiate happiness, but I can assure you he felt SO much better after writing this. Tech support also doubles as everyone’s personal therapist, you see.
Pebkac. Gui equivalent of chown perfectly working on windows and supports recursing into directories. If the questioner doesn’t know how to login as an admin they miss some absolute basic computer usage knowledge, and a general help forum thread wont help them.
Not to mention there is no admin anymore, it’s essentially a sudo style with it popping up asking are you sure.
This though really reeks of their son dragged and dropped their old files onto a new computer and didn’t set the NTFS permissions, and purposely set them up as a non admin so they wouldn’t bother them with “I got a new virus”. When I have an elderly relative ask for me to set up their computer I don’t give them admin rights
Strong Disagree, the GUI equivalent of chown is a bizarrely long series of clicks that less knowledgeable users will easily get confused doing.
I never said it’s good ux, but it’s working
You described it as pebkac - it isn’t - it’s an OS design issue.
If you read the thread they got an answer to their question, then OP posts this rant here like its a classic “windows is stupid” thing, while simply a user tries to do something which is too complex for them, and blames their lack of knowledge on the os.
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Oh! I know! Andrew wants Windows 95. But then he won’t be able to post questions on the Internet any more 😔 .
There are versions of OS/2 or BeOS that might fit his style. Although they’re called something else nowadays.
Andrew complains, Microsoft makes a root mode so Andrew can have his way. Andrew breaks his computer the next second by deleting a system file and proceeds to call Microsoft support. :)
HE SHOULDN’T HAVE TO LOG IN AS ROOT. IT’S HIS COMPUTER!!!
Most of the annoying stuff that Linux users hate about Windows are because Windows has to cater to even the least technologically knowledgeable users.
It is why Windows updates are forced, why so many files are locked behind SYSTEM user and can’t easily be circumvented, why some settings are registry or Group Policy only, why some settings are opt out, …
Without those, their support center would blow up.
So if Linux wants to become mainstream, it will have to cater to those users as well. And Linux will slowly turn into Windows.
And Linux will slowly turn into Windows.
Some distros maybe, but I’d say that instead we’d quickly have another golden era of malware.
Most of the annoying stuff that Linux users hate about Windows are because Windows has to cater to even the least technologically knowledgeable users.
Isn’t that the whole idea of GNOME? Always considering users as stupid and lowering the bar?
I won’t stand any gnome slander, get out
Is this real? Are people having to request permission changes on files by petitioning microsoft to change their permissions?
I think what happened here is that something went wrong and messed up the permissions of some of the users files. MS help suggested that he login as an administrator and reatore the intended permissions.
I don’t work with Windows boxes, but see a similar situation come up often enough on Linux boxes. Typically, the cause is that the user elevated to root (e.g. the administrator account) and did something that probably should have been done from their normal account. Now, root owns some user files and things are a big mess until you go back to root and restore the permissions.
It use to be that this type of thing was not an issue on single user machines, because the one user had full privileges. The industry has since settled on a model of a single user nachine where the user typically has limited privileges, but can elevate when needed. This protects against a lot of ways a user can accidentally destroy their system.
Having said that, my understanding of Windows is that in a typical single user setup, you can elevate a single program to admin privileges by right clicking and selecting “run as administrator”, so the advice to login as an administrator may not have been nessasary.
So this guy is just bitching because he sudo installed something?
It’s not MS having to manage your folder permissions remotely?
I feel like he has a machine that someone set up for him, and he can’t escalate permissions, because he’s on a basic user account.
The normal way this works on a single user machine is:
- You try to do something that is restricted to admin
- Windows puts up a modal dialogue box asking if you want to do it as admin
- You click yes
- You do it as admin
But in that case he can’t have locked himself out of a file, he can only be locked out of things Microsoft think you shouldn’t muck with unless you know what you’re doing
On that last part, theres a difference between elevating a file to admin, and being an admin in Windows.
In a lot of cases the ui is GREATLY simplified when not an admin, to the point where you might only have like 20% of all available options.
For the standard user? Great! Not when you’re messing around with permissions.
It’s why you ALWAYS log in as Admin when setting up a windows server. Iirc you can’t even install tiles without actually being an admin, even if you have all logins.
From my experience with windows, your current guess is correct btw :D
I’m a sysadmin and I work with Windows a lot.
The short version is that only the users granted permission to a given set of files can access those files. With NTFS permissions it’s… Complicated. You can have explicit permission to a file, or implied permission via a group that you’re a part of, or some combination of those things. You can also have read, but no write. You can have append but not create, you can have delete, but not list. It’s a lot of very granular, very crazy permissions.
There’s also deny permissions which overrule everything.
What has likely happened is that the posters user account doesn’t have implied or explicit permission to the file, but if you sign in as an administrator, even if the administrator doesn’t have permission to read/write/append/delete the file, the administrator has permission to take ownership of a file, and as owner, change the permissions of a file. Being owner doesn’t mean you can open/read/write/append/delete anything, you can just change permissions and give yourself (or anyone else) permissions to the file.
Changing ownership is a right which, as far as I’m aware, cannot be revoked from admin level users. They can always change ownership. Owners of files cannot be denied the right to change the permissions of a file as far as I know. This will always result in some method by which administrative level accounts can recover access to files and folders.
In my experience, exceptions exist but are extremely rare (usually to do with kernel level stuff, and/or lockouts by security/AV software).
The poster might legally and physically own the device and all the data contained therein, and may have an administrative level account on that device, but the fact is, their NTFS permissions are not set to allow them access to the data. The post they’re replying to is trying to let them know how to fix it by using an administrative level account and they’re not tech-savvy enough to follow along.
I don’t blame them. File permissions issues are challenging even for me, and I fully understand the problem.
Huh, having separate append permission is interesting. i didn’t realize that was an option.
Yep, there’s actually quite a few more than what I mentioned, if you get into the advanced dialogs.
IMO, it’s unnecessarily complicated, but given that NTFS is used for network file sharing in large companies, I get why it’s so crazy. They probably demand those kinds of granular permissions.
I know Linux is a lot simpler. Just read/write/execute, and a single group, single owner, and a setting for “everyone else” kind of thing, which is generally sufficient for 90% of use cases.
In defense of Andrew, until windows 10 never had I ever installed a program that made it’s own files untouchable unless you did some real fuckery with permissions.
As soon as they introduced that little warning screen in program files it was clear shit was going downhill for power users.
that made it’s own files untouchable
that made its* own files untouchable
I make that same mistake enough that at this point I figure I’m just contributing to the paradigm shift of modern english grammar.
Making the oxford comma mandatory is my next big target.
I discovered basic versions of windows are even more restrictive when I was unable to install my favorite lightweight pdf reader in a friend’s laptop because Windows home just said that for my safety I wasn’t allowed. With no option to bypass this limitation being hinted at.
Ended up installing it anyways but had to run the installer from an admin terminal (luckily it was windows 7 so it was a local account with admin rights instead of a bullshit Microsoft one)
This has to be some sort of policy being enabled. I have seen that window, but there are ways to bypass it - though in hindsight, they are not as evident. For example, right-click then choose “Open.”
basic windows… does that entail windows N by any chance?
drop the pdf reader. libreoffice makes the pdfs look horrific and apache doesnt work
Me trying to modify games from the Xbox store.
Open the files in any non-windows system and do what ever the hell you want.
The real answer?
“We once gave you commoners this power and you used it to fuck your computer up and then blamed us for it, so we learned you can’t be trusted with this power. We hid it behind a kind of skill test, and you’re failing that test.”
I prefer the answer of giving the giy the reins and letting him get it so riddled with viruses then when he calls for support replying “sorry, your property your problem. You have absolute dominion over it and thus we give no warranty as we have no responsibility.”
Microsoft gives no warranty and assumes no responsibility as it is.
Reminds me of the “chmod 777” crowd at work. Goddamn it.
Why can’t I delete System32? It’s taking up space.
Where are the other 31 systems??
Good luck with opening the subdirectories of
C:\WindowsApps\. I ran Explorer as admin, gave myself R/W permissions, even recursively changed ownership of everything, followed all the online guides… Still denied access.@ChaoticNeutralCzech
Tried knoppix?
@Reddfugee42 @programmerhumorIf you make a bootable linux usb drive you can do whatever you want with all windows stupid files without even having to install linux.
U can use proccess hacker to lauch for example total commander with SYSTEM privileges it’s highest possible privilege in windows.
it’s highest
its*
hightesthighestHighest*
Whoops! Thanks. Corrected.
Those’re probably containerised.
Sandboxed rather than containerised I think.
what was the difference for those of us who dont know, like andrew over here 😂
Sandboxed typically restricts a program from being able to read/write to various areas (think an app isn’t allowed to use the network, or access USB devices, or it’s only allowed access to a certain directory in the filesystem).
Containerised is a way of virtualising an app/apps so that they can be easily distributed to run once or thousands. They can and are also sandboxed to different degrees.
😂👌 this
Andrew is not very smart. Windows isn’t very good, but he is very clueless. There are legitimate things to complain about, but Andrew just complains.
I think Andrew might be a lawyer.
My roommate for a couple years in college was pre-law, and did some internships after graduation but before gaining his own law degree. He mentioned at one point how absolutely and hilariously pervasive it was at the firm he was working for attorneys to just run screaming to IT every single time literally anything was even the slightest bit inconvenient or obtuse (to their understanding). Part of it was the logic of “I bill clients at $800/hr, I am not spending my time to resolve whatever this hiccup is”, but part of it was absolutely also some bullshit power dynamics.
Worked in IT for over a decade, lawyers are the fucking. worst.
I see your lawyers and I raise you doctors…
I was working with a doc on an IT problem a few months ago… It was a mildy terrifying experience, I would never want someone so ignorant as my doctor.
I don’t know, I don’t think I want the best IT person in the world performing an appendectomy.
Just because you’re an expert in one field doesn’t mean you’re an expert in every field.
I don’t think I want the best IT person in the world performing an appendectomy.
“Okay so let’s start with the simplest thing by performing a power cycle and seeing if that fixes it…CLEAR!”
I was married to a lawyer for years. They have to bill somewhere from 1700-2200 hours a year to stay on partner track. And they can’t bill every hour that they’re working (although they can double up sometimes by using the minimum 2/10ths of an hour). My sympathy is with the lawyer. It’s not a power dynamic, it’s how the firm makes money and what you’re there to do.
Yeah, because being a raging asshole to your coworkers is justified as long as it helps you “stay on partner track.”
Abusive people always find justifications for it.
Because their continued employment depends on them hitting their targets so they need support staff to do their jobs.
But being rude and abusive to support staff doesn’t help, encourage, or even compel the support staff do their jobs any better or faster. In fact, I’d wager it’s rather the opposite.
I work in IT (not IT support, though) and I’m fortunate enough that none of my business partners are outright abusive. Even so, I still have some that I deprioritize compared to others because working with them is a pain (things like asking for project proposals to solve X problem and never having money to fund them). If someone was actively rude to me when I had fucked up, much less when I was doing a great job, I can guarantee I wouldn’t work any better or faster when it was for them.
Yup, there’s the justification right on time. They had to abandon basic civility and professionalism to “hit their targets.”
Thats why they can be abusive, ignore the company process for tickets, threaten their coworkers, whatever they want. They need to “stay on parnet track” and “hit their targets.” No one else has any stressors or requirements at their workplace, just the lawyers.
Nevermind that the “support staff” make sure lots of people, processes and services work, and may individually be more important to “hitting targets” for the company as a whole than any individual lawyer.
How about the lawyers “do their job” by interacting with their coworkers professionally? By submitting tickets correctly and in a timely manner?
Abusing your coworkers is never justified.
edit: nix this.
they never justified anything.
they explained.
explained why they were raging assholes or whatever.
but didn’t justify.
“Look guys, their industry makes their boss abusive to them which makes them abusive to their staff, so it’s just how it is because money…”
This is like "Well my drunk granddad had anger issues after the war so he beat my dad who beat me something fierce and I turned out fine " of the professional world.
Some people think enough money or status is worth disrespecting other human beings who are just trying to do their already shitty enough job, and that’s concerning.
I.T has to hit their “ticket targets” to stay on the “lights come on when they flip the switch at home” track, it’s how they make their money and what they’re paid to do.
Playing coddling psychologist for grown adults who could pass a bar exam but can’t handle basic respect doesn’t make things any easier lol.
To any of those types reading this:
Stressed or not, it’s amazing how fast things move when you work with IT as teammates instead of underlings, using your level brain instead of your emotionally unstable mouth.
Yeah like, complain about the one thing MS is finally improving in recent years, clamping down on non-admin users and non-admin permissions.
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Windows permissions can be tricky… I’ll give them that. A lot of the tools Microsoft provides are not very straightforward.
However, PowerShell and tools from Sysinternals suite, or open source tools as well, make it a lot easier.
Managing permissions on Linux, especially if doing the ACL thing, can be complicated too. I’ve really never ran into many permission issues myself. psexec has been helpful too when needing to access things as the SYSTEM user and not get those stupid prompts asking me to change permissions for protected folders.
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Omg, it’s an inside-joke at our company now.
Anytime something happens on a server that’s been running great for years, like a hard drive going bad or the time one literally caught on fire…
98% of the time it is selinux that is the reason it is doing weird things after the main fix because selinux changed a setting on the reboot.
“Have you checked selinux?” is the go to question whenever anything breaks now, even if it’s not a computer.
We tend to forget about it these days, but the Unix permissions model was criticized for decades for being overly simplistic. One user having absolute authority, with limited ways to delegate specific authority to other users, is not a good model for multi-user operating systems. At least not in environments with more than a few users.
A well-configured sudo or SELinux can overcome this, which is one reason we don’t bring it up much anymore. We also changed the whole model, where most people have individual PCs, and developers are often in their own little VM environment on a larger server.
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His problem is he went to answers.microsoft.com That place is a cesspool of fuck you, but here’s a copy paste of something from 2006 so I can get some karma
He could alternatively go to…
Stackoverflow or Superuser, where the answer will be “use the search bar you imbecile, locked.”
Quora, where every question is blatant rage bait like “my 14 year old son got a B in his test. I took away his PS5 and chained him in the basement as punishment but his grades aren’t improving. How can I make him better at math?”
Yahoo Answers which is dead, and was basically Quora before Quora was a thing.
Or Reddit, where you can’t even post on 95% of subs without hitting a minimum karma threshold and where some basement dwelling mod will likely ban you for breaking hidden rule #263, then modmail mute you for 28 days without reply if you try to appeal.
I think any Q&A site is absolute dog water now.
They could come to lemmy!
…where people will definitely give helpful answers and not just dunk on them for not using Linux before diving into an extended argument about distros, sudo and run0
You’re completely right, but there’s a good reason why this happens. Why are people so insistent on trying to find fixes and workarounds for a broken system?
It’s absolutely the same mindset as boomers complaining about technology these days because they don’t want to learn how to download a mobile app. These people grew up with Windows and are too stubborn or insecure to learn something new, even if it’s consistently better in multiple different ways. Yes, there are a few exceptions to that argument, but for the most part the arguments against switching to Linux are flimsy excuses, or outdated, or both.
This is absolutely the attitude he was just talking about, you can’t agree, then add a “but”
Linux is not the fix for all that ails you, and it’s especially not the fix for non tech-savvy people, which as a reminder, is most people. Lemmy is not a good baseline for this because we’re all savvy enough to get onto the fediverse in the first place, which in itself is very confusing if you’re non tech savvy or coming from a place like reddit, where things are so fundamentally different.( Which i know for a fact most of you have experienced at some point)
Linux is especially good for normal boring people. It’s only bad for tech-adventurist idiots. It does email, web, documents just like windows. There’s no learning curve (though it isn’t great for users unwilling to log in, as their keyring won’t be unlocked by auto (or biometric) log-in, so they need to add their login password before they can get email or have their browser log into Reddit for them
Bet, go ahead and grab your parents or the nearest old fart you know who isn’t tech savvy and try to get them to install linux, libre Office, and thunderbird and attempt to use it.
$100 says they won’t make it through using rufus without help
I wouldn’t do that. I installed the software for them and set up their email and showed them how to do things. Linux was harder to set up back when I did that. Printers were a headache especially
But once set up a Linux box is no harder to use than a windows or apple one
Retraining people to use new tools on a corporate scale is an immense endeavour, probably a huge cost given the dip in productivity, and that’s assuming there is an equivalent Linux tool in the first place.
For some people, learning new stuff isn’t as easy, and they just don’t have the investment to do so when all they want is to go about their day. The expectation that people shouldn’t be so reluctant to learn something new ignores the inflexibility that long-established habits bring in some demographics.
Conversely, while that demographic is locked into using Windows by virtue of the cost-benefit function to learning something new just too… not be using Windows anymore? is just unfavourable, others will have to cater to them.
Technology is advancing way faster these days, and it’s unfair to demand that everyone keep up with it. Hence, while recommending Linux is a good thing, being an elitist about it (as the people my previous commend alluded to tend to be) is unproductive.
Corporate adoption is Linux is absolutely a completely different discussion. Users of corporate devices are not the owners of their device, they have no expectation of control or freedom, and the tasks completed on these devices are typically simple and restricted. So yes, very little of my initial comment applies to that.
As for your other arguments, I would agree that the general everyday public with very little knowledge of Linux or the differences from Windows should have little expectation of switching over unless they decide to investigate for themselves. The main target my complaints are those people who come in to threads like these who do have the technical understanding to complain about Windows and understand that Linux is different, but constantly whine that they could never switch because this reason or that reason and oh won’t those Linux nerds please just accept that Windows is better even though we’re talking in the eighteenth thread full of people who hate it.
I think we’ll see more office drones happy with Libre Office (perhaps even on Linux) to avoid the monthly fee for MS 365, not in the office, because few care about what the boss provides (except for the crap screens) but at home
It’s absolutely the same mindset as boomers complaining about technology these days because they don’t want to learn how to download a mobile app.
I’m really not too sure about that.
Used to work in customer service for a major right wing (Daily Mail) newspaper, and that included tech support for their rewards club website, their newspaper reading Android/iOS/Kindle Fire app, and their bookshop website.
Pensioners struggle with technology and I really don’t think it’s just stubbornness and ignorance. I genuinely think that your ability to learn and remember things diminishes greatly as you grow older.
It was one of the worst jobs I worked in, not just because trying to explain how to do basic things like open a web browser, type in a URL or force stop and clear the cache on an Android app to a 90+ year old is like pulling teeth, but because we were paid like crap, treated like children by management, treated like shit by a lot of customers, and because we used to get a lot of editorial calls from people thinking we could put them through to a journalist so they could spout their often bigoted views. So glad I work in accountancy now. The worst customer support jobs are the ones where callers frequently go full Karen on you.
Good grief, that might be the worst customer service job I’ve ever heard of. I’ve worked Sainsbury’s ‘head office’ - which was just the outsourced customer service centre for people who phone store chains to complain about cucumbers - and that was bad enough, but at least I got some good stories out of it (“My watermelon has exploded and I’m afraid of the second one. Can a man come round and take it away?” First ever call).
You were getting Mail readers who are already a self-selecting group of thick cunts and you were getting the worst of them. Jesus Christ, that must have been rough. So, so happy for you that you’re out of that, I can’t imagine what that would do to someone’s mental health!
For the record, this was for a customer service outsourcer I used to work for. I wasn’t directly employed by Associated Newspapers and I’d say a good deal of the internal managerial and pay issues I had were down to my employer, not the client. Only thing I miss about that place were my colleagues. I had made some life-long friends in that place and there were a lot of great people who came and went.
As for management, one or two team leaders aside, they were a clique of nepotistic assholes.
I was fired from that job nearly three years into my employment (long after we lost the AN contract and I moved to a different campaign) for ‘capability’ reasons, after they dragged me through a month-long PIP and disciplinary process for failing to hit targets. Our whole email team was failing to hit performance targets and I was effectively scapegoated and bullied out of the company by a team leader who didn’t like me. In retrospect it was the best thing to ever happen to me, because had I not been sacked, I’d probably still be there on min wage and not working in commercial finance today.
My condolences on having had to work for the Mail!
My mum really wants to use her smartphone but we’ve been struggling to teach her.
Do you have any tips?
Can’t say much about iPhones because the last time I used iOS was about a decade ago, but I’m not a fan of Apple for how often they ask you to sign in to your Apple ID just to do anything on the App Store.
As for Android, learning how to open an app’s settings menu to force stop it and clear its cache is a godsend. It solves about 99% of technical issues I may face.
bro has never heard of a computer owned by more than one person
Andrew is going to get malware on his PC, guaranteed.
