Re: libgnomesu [was Re: Proposed modules: my consensus so far]

[Hongli Lai <h lai chello nl>]

Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> 	(1) worries me because it leaks some admin-tool functionality into a
> user tool which I think is likely to be frustrating and confusing for
> users who *don't* have root. It also isn't optimal for users who *do*
> have root - having to type the root password for every process you want
> to kill isn't fun.

I don't think there is any better way.

And you don't have to enter the root password every time, if you're on 
RedHat. libgnomesu uses the pam_timestamp extension when available.


> 	There's nothing (apart from the lack of shadow password support)
> distribution specific about usermode/consolehelper really.

Except that it's only included in some distributions?


> > >  - No startup-notification integration
> >
> > Last time I checked, libstartupnotify is *still* marked as "unstable API 
> > which can change any time".
>
>
> 	Yes, but if libgnomesu was part of the Desktop Release, it would be
> perfectly valid for it to use the API.

A bit offtopic: but is the latest libstartupnotification binary 
compatible with 0.4? I'm on FC1 and I'm stuck with GNOME 2.4. Garnome 
GNOME just breaks too many things (menus show up duplicate items, etc.).


> 	But, yeah, you do need multiple backends - you need to support shadow
> passwords. Could do that in the same backend binary, though, right?

No. The PAM backend is linked to libpam.so, which isn't available on 
systems without PAM.


> 	Right, we haven't figured out a good way to fix this. But it would
> strike me as pointless for one small part of GNOME to try and fix it
> independantly of the rest of GNOME - especially when the hack is going
> to make security concious people very nervous.

I can disable it by default.


> > >  - The thought of a Nautilus "Open as Superuser" component gives me
> > >    the heebie-jeebies. I'm not sure exactly why. Its irrelevant now
> > >    with Alex's recent changes to Nautilus, anyway :-)
> >
> > Did I miss anything? What changes?
>
> 	No bonobo components for Nautilus anymore.

How's that related to privilege raising?