Disabling permissions (Solved)

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jlr1701

Disabling permissions (Solved)

Post by jlr1701 »

Hey everybody,

Don't know if this is the correct forum for such a question. But... what I'm wondering about and hoping to be able to do is to disable permissions on my Mint systems entirely. I have been using computers heavily for almost 20 years, and not once have I ever needed the permissions "feature" (read major annoyance) of either the Windows or Linux OSes. I suppose they might come in handy for corporate types with large networks and data that needs to be secured, but they are useless and quite annoying for average home users, IMHO.

Rant aside (I'm annoyed at the moment), is there any way to completely (or even partially) disable this extremely annoying "feature" on Linux or Windows or both? Thanks!

Jeff
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
DruKe

Re: Disabling permissions

Post by DruKe »

If you are asking if you can remove file ownership in Linux the short answer is no.
Can you disable the unit from asking for authentication for a lot of things? The short answer is Yes.

What exactly is annoying you?
DruKe

Re: Disabling permissions

Post by DruKe »

Good post Ikey.

:mrgreen:
DrHu

Re: Disabling permissions

Post by DrHu »

jlr1701 wrote:what I'm wondering about and hoping to be able to do is to disable permissions on my Mint systems entirely. I have been using computers heavily for almost 20 years, and not once have I ever needed the permissions "feature" (read major annoyance) of either the Windows or Linux OSes
..not once have I ever needed the permissions "feature"..
You must have stopped your windows upgrades in the NT era, since that is the time that windows cottoned onto the admin/user separation that Unix and Linux had always been using

In Vista, and Win7 they have UAC (User Account Control) in place to deal with permissions
--from NT onwards they have used ACL (access control lists) for file permissions
http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/ ... sions.html
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/148437

Linux actually has a simpler permission system than ACL, and in the for home user in particular; it works works well
  • Although in describing it, it might seem complicated, in reality, it isn't
http://www.zzee.com/solutions/linux-permissions.shtml
http://www.linuxforums.org/articles/fil ... ns_94.html


Linux can also use posix ACL controls, however they don't exactly match the Windows ACL, so there can sometimes be an odd combination if you work on both simultaneously
http://www.suse.de/~agruen/acl/linux-acls/online/
jlr1701 wrote:Rant aside (I'm annoyed at the moment), is there any way to completely (or even partially) disable this extremely annoying "feature" on Linux or Windows or both? Thanks!
Er, No...
It is a fundamental aspect of using the OS (Linux, Windows, Apple OS-X)
  • If you really want a no security, no permissions OS model, best to use DOS (Freedos) or Windows prior to NT
http://www.freedos.org/

Or in Linux run everything as root (administrator)
  • That is; run everything on the OS with no security being provided..
Enable root login, change the password to blank <enter key>, then you won't be asked to authenticate anything
--but since it is not the normal method of using the system, there will be some issues regarding How to run X program.., when setting up that way..
Last edited by DrHu on Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
jlr1701

Re: Disabling permissions

Post by jlr1701 »

I really appreciate the replies, folks. What was annoying me at the time was the file ownership issue. I have a desktop system dual-booting Linux Mint 7 and Win 7. I also have a Dell netbook running Linux Mint 7. I am doing video capture from VHS tape in Windows since the capture card I have works well in Windows and doing DVD ripping in Linux since I can do it easy and free in Mint. The goal of the project is to get my netbook ready with plenty of entertainment options available to choose from for a trip to Texas in a couple of weeks. It's a long flight from Alaska! :)

Anyway, I had just transferred several video files across my home network to the netbook from Win 7, and I discovered that according to Mint on my netbook I am not the owner of those files and therefore I can't change the permissions on them or even delete them if I wanted to do so. That's what I found so annoying -- being told that on my own computer I am not the owner of a file! The reason I hate permissions so much is because IMHO I should be able to do whatever I want to any file on any of my computers at any time with no interference from the OS I am running.

I didn't stop upgrading Windows when 2000 came out, but I was unhappy about the permissions annoyances being there, and I've never liked having to deal with it and I HATED UAC. It is turned off completely in Windows 7.

I don't really want a no security OS model, but I would like a no permissions model since I have no use for permissions and find them very annoying to deal with.
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Midnighter
Level 6
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Posts: 1327
Joined: Tue May 22, 2007 1:52 pm
Location: Western Australia

Re: Disabling permissions

Post by Midnighter »

Dude, just reclaim ownership of the files. A simple sudo chown -R username:groupname /path/to/files should fix it. :)

I do this all the time to my storage drives after a reinstall. Piece of cake. And I'm no genius.
jlr1701

Re: Disabling permissions

Post by jlr1701 »

Midnighter wrote:Dude, just reclaim ownership of the files. A simple sudo chown -R username:groupname /path/to/files should fix it. :)

I do this all the time to my storage drives after a reinstall. Piece of cake. And I'm no genius.
Thanks, dude. I'll give that a shot. I'm (obviously) not a genius either, but this guy is! :)

Image
mick55

Re: Disabling permissions

Post by mick55 »

Dude
Sweet!

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DruKe

Re: Disabling permissions

Post by DruKe »

Image

I don't recall him ever having green eyes.. strange :?
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