Re: [gedit-list] question about gedit and root login

[Paolo Borelli <paolo borelli gmail com>]

Hi Tom,

	while I agree that generally running as root is not a good idea, the
behavior you describe is a bug in gedit. I think it may be related to
the fact that gedit now uses DBus to check the "current instance" and
maybe the DBus session of root behaves differently.

Do you login as root or do you login with a normal user and then use
"su"? If the latter, can you see if using "su -" makes a difference?


Ciao
	Paolo

On Tue, 2012-02-07 at 22:27 -0800, Tom Thornton wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> First of all, I want you to know that I have used gedit as my primary
> text editor since I started using Linux, in 1996.  I am not a
> corporate user, so in order to use my personal system (behind two
> firewalls) without having to constantly having to type my password, I
> run as root. A minor problem with gedit was entered into bugzilla in
> June, 2011 (Bug 653563 and 658100) by other users, and I have
> experienced it since v3.0.x.  The bother in this case is that when
> opening a file (and I have seen this problem as root, all the way down
> to low level users) a blank document is also opened.  The problem was
> the comment made by Christian Persch, stating that people shouldn't
> run GNOME programs with elevated privleges, as they are not supported.
> Why should there be any differences between normal users, and elevated
> users in a situation such as this?  Granted, X11 has security issues,
> but  shouldn't Xorg be the ones handling security of X11?  Plus, not
> everyone has systems located in vulnerable situations, so why aren't
> software issues with any user looked at?
> 
> My apologies for venting, but I am tired of all the security issues
> with Linux lately.  Either I am having to use my SU password
> constantly, or I am vulnerable, and software issues aren't considered
> if I use them in high level logins.  What's wrong with that picture?
> 
> Best Regards,
> Tom
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