Why is it that there are things that I can't delete in OS X, sometimes getting an "owned by root" message, but when I switch to OS 9 I can delete anything?
Because it's just data... I used to take a *nix boot floppy disk to the NT machines we had in high school to grab the sam files to crack the passwords... *nix did not limit my disk access like my student NT account did... it's a different OS, X can't talk to 9 on the same disk... besides 9 didn't even have that much security... there wasn't much you couldn't delete with an option empty trash... if you want to remove those files in X open up a terminal and type sudo rm -rf, then a space, then drag the file into the terminal window and it will append the files address. hit return and type in your password.
Under OS X, although you may own the machine and be an administrator, you still don't have all the file permissions possible. By default, only the root, a super user if you like, has these. This is standard Unix and, amongst other things, prevents users from accidentally deleting critical system files. OS 9 has a less hierarchical way of assigning permissions and by default any user can pretty much delete anything, possibly causing a lot of damage.
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[ 10-12-2002: Message edited by: RodUK ]</p>