Re: Root privilege (SOLVED)
On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 12:49:04AM EST, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 12:42:22AM -0500, cga2000 wrote:
< snip -- merits of sudo vs. su >
> > How's stuff like that supposed to work in a "strict" proof of concept
> > GUI environment with no *term available -- ie. all you are allowed is
> > an icon on your desktop and possibly an entry in your gnome/kde menus?
> >
> > Sounds like such GUI install/config tools would need to to be able
> > prompt the user for root's password .. or whatever group password might
> > be necessary..
> >
> See, I completely disagree here. I don't ever want the GUI installer to
> prompt me for the root password. I have no idea whether the password is
> stored securely in memory, or what other nonsense it might try. I'd
> rather that the program assume I can run it as root.
With one perverse effect being that it encourages inexperienced users to
login as root and run their entire desktop session as root. The OP
needed -- or thought he needed.. to run an unidentified (?) GUI
application as root and well .. see what happened.
I do agree that having multiple half-baked GUI tools reading .. and
possibly keeping an in-storage copy of ... the root password (or any
other password for that matter) is rather disturbing. Not to mention
the "what other nonsense it might try" part..
I don't find the perspective of running opaque installers a-la-windows
as root quite satisfactory either but if you absolutely have to .. it
does sound like the lesser evil. Especially since such installers are
probably only a tiny minority at this point.
Thanks for your comments.
cga
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