Q I have just installed SUSE 10.1 and have the following queries. First, where do I install Mozilla plugins? I can't find a mozilla/plugins directory. Second, I created a user during installation but this doesn't have root privileges. How can I achieve this?
A Mozilla and Firefox plugins can be installed in one of two places, depending on whether you install as root or a user. System-wide plugins and extensions are stored in /usr/lib/firefox/plugins and /usr/lib/firefox/ extensions, respectively. Those installed by a user, which happens when you install directly from a website such as http://plugindoc.mozdev.org or http://addons.mozilla.org, go into the appropriate directory under the user's home directory. This is .mozilla/firefox/xxx.default, where xxx is some random string of characters.
You shouldn't normally need to manipulate these files directly; installing, updating and removing extensions can be done from within Firefox. Your normal user does not, and should not, have root privileges - otherwise what's the point of a separate root user? When you need to run something that requires root privileges, Yast (or whatever program you are using) will usually ask for the root password, which you set during installation. The program will switch to root for as long as is needed and then switch immediately back to your normal user. If you need to run a terminal command as root, type
su -c "command you want to execute"
to run a single command or
su - somecommand someothercommand ... logout
In both cases, you will need the root password.