[Pythonmac-SIG] Silly MacOS X question...
Dan Grassi
dan@biznesshosting.com
Mon, 3 Dec 2001 23:03:24 -0500
On Monday, December 3, 2001, at 07:41 PM, tracy shaun ruggles wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Just installed MacOS X and trying to change file permissions within the
> folder where Apache CGI files are, *but* my own machine won't let me
> (that
> folder is owned by 'root').
>
> How does one change files that are owned by root?
Yoy have to provide a password for root, it comes blank. The easiest
way to do this is:
sudo passwd
and answer the prompts. I always use my password.
The other way is to copy your password and past it into root's password
in NetInfo Manager.
Beware, do _not_ do thinks as root unless you have to, and then use sudo
unless it is really inconvenient. Doing thinks as root is a big nubie
concept and it will cause many problems.
> ... how does one
> install things like Webware and MySQL on MacOS X so that it is run as
> root
> and/or is accessible by all users of the machine?
Get MySQL from http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/mysql/
Follow the installation instructions. Probably a larger problem is
getting the binary for the python MySQL driver, I had to compile it from
source and there are compile problems under OS 10.1. If you need this
let me know and I will post it on the net. I also understand that the
compile problem has been resolved in python 2.2b2. As for webware ask
Chuck. :-)
> And, one more X-novice question: where/what is the file that specifies
> where
> to run applications from the terminal, i.e. "python thisScript.py"
> execute
> the script using python.
I'm not sure I understand the question but I think the answer is the
$PATH environment variable. Just type
$PATH
in the terminal application to see the search directories. You can
modify this interactively of in the .cshrc file in your home directory.
> Or, better yet, "./thisScript.py" where the first line would read
> something
> like "#!/usr/local/bin/python".
Again I don't fully understand the question. First, if you are running
the command line python it will be in /usr/bin with the rest of python
in /usr/lib/python2.1 If your python is in /usr/local/bin you probably
have the GUI version and that is probably not the version you want to
use with webware. [Jack?] I have a link in /usr/local/python to
/usr/bin/python because there are some programs that assume that python
is in /usr/local/bin. MySQL does the same thing, placing many links in
/usr/local/bin to the real files in /usr/bin.
> I can't access most of the folders in /usr since I'm not 'root'.
First enter a password for root. In the GUI under the Go menu select Go
to Folder and enter the folder name. Note, you can _not_ enter /usr but
/usr/local works as do similar /usr directories, other directories do
not have this peculiarity, /etc works. Then there is the terminal, if
you are going to fiddle with the under laying unix get used to it.
Dan