Re: allowing root X apps
On 28 Oct 2001, John Hasler wrote:
> Mark writes:
> > Security isn't always such an issue.
>
> Stability is. Think of the damage a crashing Gnome application could do
> running as root. More important, though, is the bad habit this sort of
Sure, but I don't use Gnome, and I don't touch fancy window managers. I'm
not aware of any particular stability problems that, say, emacs or mtr or
whatever have as X applications over their behavior as console
applications - are there any? My X and wm for root stuff certainly seems
rock solid, but maybe it's mine is more stable than usual because I'm the
sort of person who throws 'Option "slow_edodram"' etc. into XF86Config in
wanting stability over performance.
> thing creates. There is nothing you need to do as root that can't be done
> from a console.
True. I certainly find that the convenience far outweighs any risk,
though, given that in the past few years I've not yet encountered any risk
where some root operation was made more dangerous through use of X! For
people with more unstable installations, I'd agree with you, but that's
not everybody.
-- Mark
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