Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

On another thread I worked out how to search for my old posts on the old forum.

I was looking for the answer to an Opera puzzle I solved a while back and now can't remember how I did it . I did not find the post.

When you start Opera it wants to start as "Spot" . Well bugger Spot I want to run my programs as root. That's why we use Puppy.

So I worked out how to add a shortcut to "opera.bin" and on the shortcut edit it to start "--no-sandbox" which gets it running as root user but I find now it will not let me download to my hard drive , it wants to only upload and download from the "Spot" directory in my savefile and they seem to have gone to long lengths to stop me achieving that .

Anybody know what else I can do to get my downloads where I want them as if I leave them in spot it soon fills my save file . I'm pretty sure I asked about a year or so ago but maybe 2 and some kind soul solved it for me but as above ive searched high and low without success.

What version of Puppy Linux?
What version of Opera and where did you get it?

You can always use Rox or any file manager, to move anything from spot directory, to any other place.
Those programs are running as root.

This is one fix, but kind of looks like what you are doing, already.

Go to /usr/lib/opera/opera.bin Link the file to the desktop by dragging it to the desktop from a filer. Then edit that desktop entry under "Arguments to pass" and put "--no-sandbox" and voila its now running as root and you can save where you damnwell like.

In the Login Security Manager
Is Opera listed and not checked to run as spot?

@April :-

I believe I've got the solution for you.

A few years back, I developed the "Spot2Root" utility. It's a bunch of scripts and a wee, YAD-powered GUI that moves stuff in & out of the 'spot' directory, changing permissions along the way.

For stuff you download, it'll move it into the /root/Downloads directory, and changes permissions from "spot:spot" to "root:root" as Puppy prefers. For anything you want to upload, the GUI will show you the 'spot' directory, allowing you put stuff into the 'Uploads' directory, then you can set 'spot' permissions before uploading (most applications that insist on running as spot also refuse to work with files that have 'root:root' permissions).

The only reason there are two versions is because you get a much more up-to-date version of YAD supplied with the package; this is around a MB in size, but it never hurts to have a newer version, and it's always backwards-compatible. It's necessary for one of the GUI functions to work properly.

Normally, this is accessed by an icon in the tray area to the right, which is auto-started at boot-time. You can, however, choose to disable the autostart function, and simply run it when you want to from its Menu entry in Menu->Filesystem.

If you're interested, you can find it here:-

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders ... sp=sharing

-----------------------------------------

There is, as it happens, another solution to this. You could always use my Opera-portable, instead.....because THIS "runs as root".

viewtopic.php?p=21060#p21060

Hope that helps.

Mike.

bigpup wrote: ↑Sun Apr 18, 2021 11:19 am

This is one fix, but kind of looks like what you are doing, already.

Go to /usr/lib/opera/opera.bin Link the file to the desktop by dragging it to the desktop from a filer. Then edit that desktop entry under "Arguments to pass" and put "--no-sandbox" and voila its now running as root and you can save where you damnwell like.

Thanks bigpup . I got a chuckle from that one ! That's actually my post I was looking for . Used an alias ..my partners name to post it .
Trouble is it looks like I should not have said anything because new versions stop it happening like that.

Thanks also Mike, Ill give yours a go . I don't want to be downloading to Spot and then having the extra work of moving them off. And I'll keep quiet about it too.

What mongrels they must be to want to screw down their loyal users to be unable to do what they want in Opera. Its the same with the Google search . Since Google took them over you can't get rid of their search box any way that I have found . I don't want it there ,I use DuckDuck and always have.

Opera-portable appears to be windows only ..didn't find a download for Linux.

Mike that "Spot2Root" works well.

But... it puts them into Downloads which is in my "savefile"
Thats part of the reason I want to deal with them as root to keep them out of that area altogether and have them safely outside of "savefile" so it does not fill up and have to be expanded for crappy stuff.

Can I have the code so I can move it out of there or can you change it a bit to give an option to pick the file you want them to go to please Mike?
The script file does not seem to address it to anywhere?

#/bin/sh
#
# Place executable icon in tray - thanks to musher0/fredx181
#
yad --notification --item-separator=":" --no-middle --text="File permissions changer" --command='/usr/local/bin/PermSelector.sh' --image='/usr/local/lib/X11/pixmaps/up_down.png' --menu="About:s2r_splash:gtk-about|Quit:quit:gtk-quit"

PermSelector.sh is not showing me directories either.

Maybe Opera is still running as spot.

You can run Opera and run htop to see if it is running as spot or as root.
Or you can type:

ps | grep -i opera

"--no-sandbox" does not force it to run as root.

williams2 . It seems to be.

es=v8_context_snapshot_data:100,v8_natives_data:101
8127 root 0:33 /usr/lib/opera/opera.bin --type=renderer --no-sandbox --field-trial-handle=8897069481238221567,2942079459597065004,131072 --lang=en-US --enable-auto-reload --ab_tests=DNA-70598-test:DNA-70598 --num-raster-threads=1 --service-request-channel-token=11897264001704046267 --renderer-client-id=16 --no-v8-untrusted-code-mitigations --shared-files=v8_context_snapshot_data:100,v8_natives_data:101
8139 root 0:00 /usr/lib/opera/opera.bin --type=renderer --no-sandbox --field-trial-handle=8897069481238221567,2942079459597065004,131072 --lang=en-US --extension-process --enable-auto-reload --ab_tests=DNA-70598-test:DNA-70598 --num-raster-threads=1 --service-request-channel-token=17889113167185994777 --renderer-client-id=7 --no-v8-untrusted-code-mitigations --shared-files=v8_context_snapshot_data:100,v8_natives_data:101
8148 root 0:06 /usr/lib/opera/opera.bin --type=renderer --no-sandbox --field-trial-handle=8897069481238221567,2942079459597065004,131072 --disable-gpu-compositing --lang=en-US --extension-process --enable-auto-reload --ab_tests=DNA-70598-test:DNA-70598 --num-raster-threads=1 --service-request-channel-token=9938700694709671788 --renderer-client-id=8 --no-v8-untrusted-code-mitigations --shared-files=v8_context_snapshot_data:100,v8_natives_data:101
8156 root 0:01 /usr/lib/opera/opera.bin --type=renderer --no-sandbox --field-trial-handle=8897069481238221567,2942079459597065004,131072 --disable-gpu-compositing --lang=en-US --extension-process --enable-auto-reload --ab_tests=DNA-70598-test:DNA-70598 --num-raster-threads=1 --service-request-channel-token=4713582781460694385 --renderer-client-id=9 --no-v8-untrusted-code-mitigations --shared-files=v8_context_snapshot_data:100,v8_natives_data:101
8160 root 0:10 /usr/lib/opera/opera.bin --type=renderer --no-sandbox --field-trial-handle=8897069481238221567,2942079459597065004,131072 --disable-gpu-compositing --lang=en-US --extension-process --enable-auto-reload --ab_tests=DNA-70598-test:DNA-70598 --num-raster-threads=1 --service-request-channel-token=9165640163995864420 --renderer-client-id=10 --no-v8-untrusted-code-mitigations --shared-files=v8_context_snapshot_data:100,v8_natives_data:101
8245 root 0:00 /usr/lib/opera/opera.bin --type=renderer --no-sandbox --field-trial-handle=8897069481238221567,2942079459597065004,131072 --disable-gpu-compositing --lang=en-US --extension-process --enable-auto-reload --ab_tests=DNA-70598-test:DNA-70598 --num-raster-threads=1 --service-request-channel-token=6699919894738908058 --renderer-client-id=17 --no-v8-untrusted-code-mitigations --shared-files=v8_context_snapshot_data:100,v8_natives_data:101
13832 root 0:00 /usr/lib/opera/opera.bin --type=renderer --no-sandbox --field-trial-handle=8897069481238221567,2942079459597065004,131072 --disable-gpu-compositing --lang=en-US --enable-auto-reload --ab_tests=DNA-70598-test:DNA-70598 --num-raster-threads=1 --service-request-channel-token=5347011899305794919 --renderer-client-id=20 --no-v8-untrusted-code-mitigations --shared-files=v8_context_snapshot_data:100,v8_natives_data:101
19704 root 0:00 grep -i opera
root#

Running as root, you should be able to save to the hard drive. Or anywhere. i can save to my hard drive using Opera portable 75.0

It;s possible for the hard drive to be mounted read-only, but then no program would be able to save to the hard drive.

By the way, with the "VPN" turned on, https://www.whatsmyip.org/ thinks I'm in Wichita, Kansas.
But if I type whatsmyip in Google, it knows my correct ip address.

@April :-

The easiest way round this is to move your Downloads folder into /mnt/home, and then to sym-link it back.

• Open a ROX window on /root.

• Open a second ROX window on /mnt/home (the place where all the main 'Puppy' files live).

• Drag 'Downloads' from /root across to /mnt/home, and drop it (select 'Move'). Let it finish the move.

• Now, drag the 'Downloads' folder from /mnt/home back across to /root again, and drop it; this time, select 'Link(Relative)'.

---------------------------------------------

Your Downloads folder is now outside the 'save', but Puppy sees it as being inside, and can still find it. Anything saved to 'Downloads', however, is outside the 'save', because the sym-link sends it straight to /mnt/home/Downloads instead.

Opera (and indeed, Vivaldi) can be problematic; for me, at least, they won't allow me to save to anywhere except 'Downloads'.....and that's even with checking the option in 'Settings' to 'Ask me where to save files'.

I can't write this into the code because many newer Puppies don't in fact use /mnt/home any more; instead, they use '/initrd/mnt/dev_save'. (Well; I probably COULD.....but my scripting isn't quite that good yet..!!)

Mike.

April, you'll find the link to Mike's portable opera here, viewtopic.php?p=10650#p10650. 64-bit only. For 32-bit systems, you can use tallboy's fav, portable vivaldi, viewtopic.php?p=3491#p3491; or my preferred, Iron -- link here, viewtopic.php?p=4865#p4865. If you want, Iron will take a speed-dial extension.

I used to edit the script in Mike's spot-to-root until it dawned on me that a symlink to /mnt/home was just easier. But you can open /usr/local/bin/spot-to-root in a text-editor and modify the 'blue-for-emphasis' part of the line
chown -R root:root ~/spot/Downloads/* && mv -v ~/spot/Downloads/* ~/Downloads/
to your preferred destination.

Thanks both , working on it

williams2 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 6:48 am

By the way, with the "VPN" turned on, https://www.whatsmyip.org/ thinks I'm in Wichita, Kansas.
But if I type whatsmyip in Google, it knows my correct ip address.

I tried that too but google gave me the same as other "whatsmyIP" services .
Maybe its only on the mobile app or as I am back on xenialpup perhaps the Opera new version is doing that? Can you check?
I don't want google knowing anything nor facebook for that matter ,its just add after add after add.

I tried it, but I remembered that I have "Bypass VPN for Search Engines" on.

I tried a Google search for whatsmyip again, but Google immediately demands that I prove that I'm not a robot by clicking on captcha pictures. I couldn't seem to prove I'm not a robot.

I rarely use Google, anyway. Usually I use https://www.duckduckgo.com/html
sometimes https://search.disroot.org/
or https://www.startpage.com/
or https://www.ecosia.org/
or https://swisscows.com/
etc etc

I hope you have checked recently that you are NOT a robot!
I keep getting asked what sex I am so I have to keep looking to reassure myself. Psychosomatic

I tried it again.

https://www.whatsmyip.org/more-info-about-you/ thinks I'm in Wichita.

Google https://www.google.com/ seems to think that I'm in the Netherlands.
It thinks my ip address is 2001:67c647:12::162 (it's not)
Google thinks I am a (Dutch) robot because the VPN's activity is suspicious to Google.

I forgot I had "Bypass VPN for search engines" on. before.