How to run file manager with root privileges May 25, 2007
Posted by AskMike in Computers & Internet.trackback
If you have set up your sudoers file and have a working sudo command (recommended), then simple issuing a `sudo programname from a terminal will allow you to run the program with root privileges. Since you’re looking for a file manager, you would use `sudo nautilus`, enter the root password and nautilus will opon up in /root with full access to all files/folders.
Ubuntu desktop users: If you’re constantly creating “sudo” sessions in Nautilus (or other applications), it’s very easy to confuse your sudo windows with your regular windows. This often results in accidentally opening read-only versions of your system files — very frustrating! A quick way to visually separate your simultaneous sessions, is to assign a different theme to your sudo applications. To do this, open a terminal and type the following:
sudo gnome-theme-manger
Pick a new theme, and any time you launch an application using sudo, you will be able to clearly see the difference between your sudo windows and your regular windows. Check out the difference in the Nautilus sessions shown above (the sudo window is shown in brown on the right, and the regular user window is shown in blue on the left).
Thanks, Mike. Running Xubuntu with xfce, sudo Thunar did the trick. Thunar posts a warning that you are running with root privileges but I had no trouble with it.
I hate permissions and I think they are just a self centered way of programmers whining for attention. So everyone has to put up with this user / root user garbage and can’t do what they like with their files. I think it is complete garbage that after I spent an hour installing cisco vpn and patching it with some arcane command I had to create a configuration file in notepad and then drag it into the etc folder. The only problem is you can’t just drag folders into the etc folder because you have to figure out how to launch the file explorer which apparently is called nautilus (and launches with one click ) in root which means I have to launch nautilus from the command line with sudo. This is why linux is still unusable.