How do I reach/edit /etc/security/pam_env.conf?

In a quest to find out how to enable touchscreen scrolling in Firefox, I found this

"Add MOZ_USE_XINPUT2 DEFAULT=1 to /etc/security/pam_env.conf"

How do I get to "/etc/security/pam_env.conf"? it doesn't seem to be in the Firefox about:config and when put into my terminal it says permission denied.

1 Answer

It is asking you to edit the existing file to add a new variable. The simplest text editor in Ubuntu is nano.

System files, including those in /etc, need sudo priveleges to edit. Please open a terminal and do:

sudo nano /etc/security/pam_env.conf

After supplying your password, the file will open ready to be modified. I suggest that you add the text at the very end so that you can easily find and remove it if you decide to at some later time. The end of the file will look like this:

#
# silly examples of escaped variables, just to show how they work.
#
#DOLLAR DEFAULT=\$
#DOLLARDOLLAR DEFAULT= OVERRIDE=\$${DOLLAR}
#DOLLARPLUS DEFAULT=\${REMOTEHOST}${REMOTEHOST}
#ATSIGN DEFAULT="" OVERRIDE=\@

Add your new variable so that it looks like this:

#
# silly examples of escaped variables, just to show how they work.
#
#DOLLAR DEFAULT=\$
#DOLLARDOLLAR DEFAULT= OVERRIDE=\$${DOLLAR}
#DOLLARPLUS DEFAULT=\${REMOTEHOST}${REMOTEHOST}
#ATSIGN DEFAULT="" OVERRIDE=\@
MOZ_USE_XINPUT2 DEFAULT=1

Proofread carefully. Save the file (Ctrl+o followed by Enter) and close the text editor (Ctrl+x).

I am not familiar with this method of invoking touchscreen scrolling, so I can't vouch for its effectiveness. This answer is simply to show you how to add text at the end of a file.