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Re: Odd behavior of Debian 10.7 with MATE desktop



On 2021-02-01 04:46, Richard Owlett wrote:
I have just installed Debian 10.7 to my Lenovo T510 Thinkpad having copied debian-10.7.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso to a flash drive [the machine is intentionally isolated from the internet].

When logging in as user, everything appears normal.

*HOWEVER* when logged in as "root" the desktop *DOES NOT*:
   1. display a folder titled "root's Home"
   2. display icons for files in /root/Desktop
   3. display icons for file systems mounted when plugging in a flash
      drive [although Caja properly shows them to be in /media/root]

Any ideas? Is this a known bug?


So, you are logging in as root using the graphical desktop manager and arriving at a graphical desktop? Most people recommend against that. It would not surprise me that some software refuses to run as root, as a security feature.


Instead, I use Terminal, su(1) to root, and add my public key to root's authorized_keys file. Once I've done that, I can use ssh-agent(1) and ssh-add(1), enter my passphrase once, and then use ssh(1) to log in to any account on any networked machine that has my public key.


"SSH Mastery" by Lucas [1] is a worthwhile investment.


David


[1] https://mwl.io/nonfiction/tools#ssh


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