[Pythonmac-SIG] Silly MacOS X question...

[Marcelinus Prastawa]

These are all UNIX-related questions. Does this really apply to the list? 
Maybe, maybe not.

Since I am procrastinating anyway, I'll try to answer them...
[To other members, sorry if I am breaking a rule or two. I am posting this 
to the list hoping that this will help others new to the UNIX side of Mac 
OS X]

> How does one change files that are owned by root?

You can only do this if you are root or have admin access. Try 'man su' 
and 'man sudo' on the terminal.

> 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?

Try 'man chmod', look up the part about setting the user and group ID on 
execution.

> 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.

It's not really a file. The terminal runs a shell (the command line 
interface). It looks up binaries based on a variable called $PATH..
'man tcsh' will give you the gory details...

> Or, better yet, "./thisScript.py" where the first line would read 
> something
> like "#!/usr/local/bin/python".  I can't access most of the folders in 
> /usr
> since I'm not 'root'.

Now this is odd, you should at least have read and execute permissions on 
files in /usr. Normally you are just not permitted to write on /usr.

The best way to get your questions answered would be to get a UNIX 
tutorial. Try searching "unix tutorial" on google, this should help you 
get started (there are tons of them).

Marcel