Can't edit text -

[Rick Stevens]

Bob Goodwin wrote:
> On 28/10/09 17:12, James Wilkinson wrote:
>> Bob Goodwin wrote:
>>   
>>>     I have two completely updated F-11 computers in which the OpenOffice
>>>     word processor is nearly useless because I can't edit anything?
>>>
>>>     I can open a document and copy it to a new file but it doesn't trust
>>>     me to change anything, a matter of permissions perhaps but I can't
>>>     see where to change it.
>>>
>>>     Am I alone in this, can anyone tell me what I need to do?
>>>
>>>      
>> Have you checked SELinux: do you have setroubleshoot installed?
>>
>> James.
>>    
> 
> I guess I do, not sure how to tell but when I do locate "setroubleshoot" 
> it produces a long list of files. I haven't had any selinux error 
> messages since installing F-11.

"locate setroubleshoot" will show you a list of files with
'setroubleshoot' somewhere in the path.  If you get a long list, then
you have it installed.  Under Gnome, you can run it by going to:

	Applications->System Tools->SELinux Troubleshooter

> My problems appear to occur when I transfer files via sftp. That changed 
> the owner to root. I created a new directory as user "bobg" and moved 
> the files to it, then removed the original directory and recreated it as 
> bobg and put the files back in and things work normally. I imagine all 
> that really needs to be done is to change the owner, the permissions 
> were ok.

Unless you use the "-P" option to the "get" command, then sftp will
change the ownership to whomever you ran sftp as and the permissions
will be set to the umask for that user.  I don't think sftp has any
concept of SELinux contexts, though, so the files may need to be
"restorecon"ned as well after downloading.

> Things are working and I know how to cause the problem, another case of 
> knowing what doesn't work. I'm sure it is the result of doing something 
> wrong with sftp. That will take some more investigation I've transferred 
> a lot of files that way without a problem?

Note that "scp" works as well, but the option is "-p", not "-P":

	scp -p remote-machine:/path/to/files /local/path

I prefer it because you can pull down multiple files and subdirectories
as well by using the "-r" option:

	scp -rp remote-machine:/path/to/files /local/path

Whatever floats your boat, I suppose.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer                      ricks at nerd.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2        ICQ: 22643734            Yahoo: origrps2 -
-                                                                    -
-      Do you know how to save five drowning lawyers?  No?  GOOD!    -
----------------------------------------------------------------------