Re: access to /var/log/messages

2000-09-03 Thread John Galt
Have you considered uncommenting the "log to ttyv" line in syslog.conf, then you don't need to play around with perms? If you MUST elevate user privs, try "sudo" first rather than making your user GID 0--you can gain all the functionality you need, but don't open yourself to another compromisable

Re: access to /var/log/messages

2000-09-02 Thread Kai Weber
+ William Jensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Therefore is it wise policy to add my user account to the 'root' group? Would > that solve the problem while maintaining system security? Or is there a > better way of achieving this? And how would I go about adding myself to the > root group...modify /et

access to /var/log/messages

2000-09-01 Thread Peter Firmstone
William, The command you need is usermod, add the administrator (adm) group to your user: $ usermod -g [ your main group] -G adm, [other groups you may want to add separated by commas] Your can learn more information about groups and suchlike by looking at the howto's in the /usr/doc/ director

Re: access to /var/log/messages

2000-09-01 Thread Eric G . Miller
On Fri, Sep 01, 2000 at 02:05:47PM -0500, William Jensen wrote: > Greetings Debians, > > I'd like to give access to the directory /var/log/messages to my user > account so I can watch what messages are being displayed there. I'd > do this with tail -f /var/log/messages. Problem is my user accnt

Re: Followup: access to /var/log/messages

2000-09-01 Thread Andrew Sullivan
On Fri, Sep 01, 2000 at 02:49:05PM -0500, William Jensen wrote: > I used adduser adm and it worked like a charm. My question is why > does it work? The folder /var/log is owned by root and has root group. Why > does adm have rights to that...how does that all fit together? If you do

Followup: access to /var/log/messages

2000-09-01 Thread William Jensen
I usually add myself to the adm group. That way, I get access to the file /var/log/messages. You can use either adduser or usermod utilities. The latter can mess thigs up if you don't list your groups carefully -- read the man pages. Andrew, I used adduser adm and it worked like a charm. My

access to /var/log/messages

2000-09-01 Thread William Jensen
Greetings Debians, I'd like to give access to the directory /var/log/messages to my user account so I can watch what messages are being displayed there. I'd do this with tail -f /var/log/messages. Problem is my user accnt has no permissions on that directory. I could change the permissions on t