So I need to change the permissions of my user account. I can
access the root account on the server, but don't know how to
change the permissions of my user account. I was advised to
try 'userconf' to see if I am part of a group, but I dunno how that works. ANyone who knows how to see the members of a group and how to change permissions on a user from root, PLEASE HELP!!
What OS are you using? From your question I'm not sure about what exactly you are trying to change.
If it's permissions on files - check out the man page on chmod
If it's owner of files - check out the man page on chown
If it's for when a user creates new files - check out umask
If it's for accessing different directories - check out the group file (possibly in /etc) or in NIS ypcat group.
If you are using NIS then you need to change a user's group via the Master NIS server.
If you don't know how userconf works, check the man page ( try from the % or $ prompt
% man userconf
And do not post questions twice!!
Okay, what i meant is when I go into a file via vi and try to change something and save the changes with :wq, i get the message "Cannot create backup file, (use ! to override)". Also whenever i try to create a new file, after i write the file, and type :wq, it says "test.pl (that's my file) Cannot open file for writing" What does this mean? How come I cannot edit anything but can access the files and read them.
I tried man userconf. It gives me "no manual entry for userconf." Is userconf even a command?
Lastly, I'm not sure what OS this server is on. I inherited this project from a friend. It's a learning project for me, so I'm trying to get familiar with Unix and perl.
Okay, to get the OS - post the output of the uname -a command.
(check the man page before doing anything anyone tells you to do - just so you know they didn't get you to kill something 
% uname -a
Is there a command userconf? Not on my servers - I searched the forums and found it posted one other time as an answer but it didn't note what the OS was. Since we don't know what you are running yet, hard to say. Each UNIX version is different - when I went from Solaris to AIX (only for 4 months) I was blown away by what did not work anymore (commands that SUN added to their software - mostly for administration).
It sounds like you are looking to be able to change files so check out the following man pages for your system -
% man id
% man who
% man chmod
% man chown
Make sure if you start changing ownership and permissions that it isn't going to
If you need more info, post back