Foothold: Found a helpful snake, but it was a bit moody. It worked once I hard-coded some things. You can grab the user flag with the foothold.
Upgrading shells is a useful skill to have.
Local: I wasted so much time on this. There is just so much to sieve through and things that look useful, but are actually useless. I recommend liberal enum withfind and grep. In the end the solution is easier than you probably thought.
Root: This is easy, just google and follow basic tutorials