A Tragi-Comically Complex Solution For My Linux Problem…

by Paul Sherman on March 15, 2007 · 3 comments

in Everything Else

Last summer I blogged about my problems accomplishing even simple configuration tasks in the Ubuntu Linux distro. (Here are links to the first post and the second post.)

I noticed that someone in the open source community quite helpfully posted an explanation of how I could solve one of my Linux problems. I appreciate that quite a lot. However, the solution itself just reinforces my point that Linux is not as usable as it needs to be for the mainstream computing herd.

Here’s the excerpted solution:

When you logged in as root in the command window, you made it so that command window was running a session using the root login. However, the rest of your system was logged in using your normal user name, which does not have “root” privileges. So, if you open a text editor using the menuing system, then that instance of the editor is running using your normal login, not root. Hence, the editor will not be able to store a file the GRUB “menu.lst” file (I think this is what you’re trying to edit, right?).

What you need to do is invoke the editor from within the command window where you are logged in as root. If your editor is gedit, you can do this by typing the following at the comand line:

gedit &

Before you actually change “menu.lst” I recommend making a backup copy of the current version by going to the correct directory within your command window where you’re logged in as root and entering something like:

cp menu.lst menu.lst_ok

You probably knew the command, but the point is it has to be done within the command window where you’ve changed your user to root.

Ubuntu also provides an alternative approach for opening an editor with “root”/superuser privileges:

1. open a command/terminal window
2. execute: sudo gedit
3. enter your password

This runs a session of the gedit editor as user “root”.

Again, great help from the community. But the solution is tragi-comically (comi-tragically?) complex. Remember, I was just trying to change the boot order! I shouldn’t have to possess all that conceptual background knowledge.

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Tagged as: Linux, Open Source

  • Anonymous

    What do you mean, “just”?

    : )

    Look, Linux is powerful. The things you are complaining about are part of the power, and part of the reason Linux is secure. Vista, I understand, finally has some division between root and users, too, and you know why? Because it’s the right thing from a security point of view. So you are complaining about a feature, not a bug.

    And may I ask, when was the last time you changed the boot order on a Windows box? It’s not so simple and easy either.

  • Bill Morita

    Stop whineing.
    If you think this is serious issue, you can write a bash script to resolve the problem and submit it as an open source contribution.

    - Bill Morita

  • http://www.usabilityblog.com PJS

    Quoting Bill: “You can write a bash script to resolve the problem and submit it as an open-source contribution.”

    Absolutely, you’re right. I could do that and give back to the FOSS community. And I’d be an insider, a hobbyist, not a user who was trying to get my work done or run my business.

    People like that are smart, but they don’t have the time to earn about BASH (or any other shell), work out the correct commands and syntax, and figure out how to submit their contribution to the community.

    I’m speaking from the persona of someone who wants alternatives to the Wintel oligopoly, but doesn’t want to become enmeshed in low-level details of configuration files and shell scripts. (I know, so I should go get a Mac…:-))

    Let’s reframe your point by applying it to another domain where most people depend on technology to work consistently and with high reliability: automotive transport.

    Is it whining to want your car to start up each morning and idle at 900 RPM? If your car suddenly started sticking at high idle (say 2000 RPM), wouldn’t you want to fix it quickly and without having to understand (for older cars) how to adjust the carb or set the engine timing?

    You just want it to work.

    But for automotive enthusiasts, half the fun is in tweaking the engine till it idles at precisely 950 RPM. And that’s fine. They’re hobbyists.

    It seems to me FOSS and GNU/Linux enthusiasts often implicitly assume that everyone should approach Linux as a hobbyist does, and solve their problems by interacting with the community (or RTFM’ing) . I believe this is the big mismatch is between “the community” and everyone else.

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