On 6/20/23 22:17, paulf@quillandmouse.com wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2023 17:03:24 -0400 Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 04:56:39PM -0400, paulf@quillandmouse.com wrote:Apparently the broader dictum is "never run GUI apps as root". Why? What's special about GUI apps versus those you run in a terminal?The extreme example is a web browser. Your typical web browser probably has thousands of bugs in it. GUI apps are big and complicated. Running them with elevated privileges is just asking for problems.So this isn't anything specific, but a general concern for what GUI apps may be doing behind your back, because they are so complex.In a sensible design, the GUI part would run as you, and it would send requests to a daemon that runs as root, or simply issue shell commands with "sudo" or something, to do the parts that need extra privs.I infer that Synaptic, by requiring root privileges to be truly useful, is mis-designed, since there isn't a daemon executing root level commands in the background. Paul
I'll not argue with that.But for the lists benefit, my last msg indicated I was going to logout and back in. Which I tried to do, but with a root pw set, or something else, IDK and don't at this point care because the only damned way I can login is as root!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So since I was root, and the screen looked normal for a different account, I tested synaptic and it ran as root just fine, so I took advantage of it, found the tasks section and installed all of gnome and all of kde, to the extent that the task pulled in several hundred packages each time for each interface.
And it didn't make a fat rats ass of difference EXCEPT if I su me, then cd /home/gene, nothing with a gui can be run as me, display 0:0 is locked away from me, in essence reversing the can't open display errors I was getting as me for sudo-ing to do gui and root requiring tasks.
Explain that.I can change my (gene's) pw to anything and back successfully, but its no damned good at the login requester. I'm sorry if I sound exasperated but that is exactly where I am. Luckily I remembered the pw at my isp or I would not be sending this. I gave up and went to bed about 22:00 but was so frustrated I couldn't sleep. So I'm back up wih 4x4's under my eyelids but I'm alive.
So the next thing I'd like to try is getting rid of wayland and installing X11, but the packege managers want to strip the machine totally just to install the first X11 component. Stripped so badly I suspect I would even have a font left for the test login. So where do I do from here?
No cheers now, Gene