How to operate as root in GUI?

Question

I have a problem with my app here. My configuration is as such I can upload a new release and symbolically link it for production -- however, this means every time I upload a new release, all of the photos that were uploaded in any parts of my entire project are wrapped into the old release and disappear.

How can I save these files to a static file location which does not get wrapped in the release? Thanks in advance.

Solution 1

Press AltF2 to run a command and then enter gksu nautilus (using gksu is the recommended way to open GUI's with root permissions). There's a nautilus script that allows you to open a directory as root, look for nautilus-gksu on your repositories.

Solution 2

News from 2018: https://itsfoss.com/gksu-replacement-ubuntu/

Brief: gksu is deprecated. It is removed from Debian, Ubuntu 18.04 and other newer Linux distribution version. You can achieve the gksu functionality with gvfs admin backend. Here’s how to do that.

Comments

[Renan]

Are you using GNOME 2 or 3?

[Bananguin]

Well, 1. if the directories aren't readable for you there's usually a good reason for it and 2. my Nautilus version 3.4.2 has exactly such an option as you describe. What system are you on precicely? I suppose you could always start nautilus as user root and use that to browse your fs. However, this may also not be what you want.

[Benny Abramovici]

@user1129682 Launching nautilus as root is a good way. I tried 'su', 'nautilus' and it works. You should make that an answer.

[Brian D]

Of course. MEDIA_ROOT = '/home/my_app/production/static_files' is what I currently have, which lives in the same dir as the source code -- thanks :)

[carandraug]

@proneon running such programs with sudo alone is asking for trouble. There's plenty of pages on the internet about why, and that's why programs like gksu exist.

[dan carter]

How do we do this in ubuntu 18.04, there is no gksu package