Am a newbie to Kubuntu 4.7.1 & need to change permission of a file owned by root. Tried this:
/etc/X11$ kdesudo chmod a+rw xorg.conf
Would appreciate your help.

try:

Code: Select all

 sudo chmod a+rw xorg.conf

Ran sudo chmod a+rw /etc/X11/xorg.conf
On checking file, it is still owned by root
Reason for needing to update this file:
Changing - NVidia X Server settings - X Server Display confgiuration
On saving:
Failed to parse existing X config file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'! OK
Save X Configuration /etc/X11/xorg.conf (merg button inaccessible OK
Save - Unable to open X config file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' for writing.

pretty clueless, all I can think is that there's something amiss in xorg.conf

I'm thinking you might need to generate a new xorg.conf file as yours maybe corrupt, renaming it and restating the pc should force a regeneration of the file with default settings


moved to Operating System specific, as it is not a KDE issue

fyi there is a nvidia-setting program available, for changing some settings

Summary of progress(??) so far:
sudo chmod a+rw xorg.conf enabled me to delete contents, but renaming the file not allowed.
Rebooted -
ran sudo chmod a+rw xorg.conf
Changed - NVidia X Server settings - X Server Display confgiuration
On saving:
Failed to parse existing X config file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'! OK
Save X Configuration /etc/X11/xorg.conf (merg button inaccessible) OK
Save - Msg: "Unable to open X config file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' for writing."
xorg.conf file
Any other ideas?

doing a Google search brings up a fair number of similar issues, seem to be mostly *buntu by the 1st results page, though no idea why it would be. Maybe they will be of help

https://www.google.com/search?client=op ... el=suggest

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?s= ... ostcount=9
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= ... ostcount=5

please post exactly what worked for you in case someone else has the same issue

I see two better options than changing the file permissions of xorg.conf:
1. run nvidia-settings as root: "kdesu nvidia-settings"
2. save a new xorg.conf file to your home directory, and copy it to /etc as root: "sudo cp xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf"

Also, as has been said already, there's two programs, "chown" and "chmod". chmod will only change the permission flags, not the owner. If you want to change the owner, use chown. However, chmod a+rw should also enable everyone to write to the file afaik.

Greetings,
Sven