Changing permissions

[Krycheck]

I want my non-root login to have access to /mnt and /usr directories. I did change them before and I forgot how. I also made the mistake of changing another directory I can't remember that wouldn't let me start X. Don't know if changing /usr did this. There's anything in /usr that will do this if i change it?

[slapNUT]

You could edit /etc/group and add your user to the root group.

[Krycheck]

Like this?:

root:x:0:root,krycheck

Is there another way?

[bdl]

If you want RW perms on different mountpoints or under /usr, I'd recommend adding a specific group, maybe something like 'admin' or 'staff' that has a relatively low GID (normally your system will already have these groups). Add your user to that group, and chown the specific directories you want access to. I'd stay away from giving yourself a 0 GID and you definitely don't want to give world RWX perms to directories.

[slapNUT]

bdl's way is probably better. I agree about adding yourself to root group is dangerous, but most of GID 0 permissions are r-x which cuts down on the damage you can do a little bit.

[Krycheck]

and I would do this how? :)