Re: gsu (Was Re: More Political Stuff)

[Vince Hodges <vhodges home com>]

>>>>> "Joe" == Joe Shaw <joe@helixcode.com> writes:

    >> ok.  I think for things like helix-update/redcarpet and the
    >> conf tools, the maintains of those packages should arrange for
    >> their desktop files to be wrapped by gsu automatically.

    Joe> I would love to do this, but I can't until it gets security
    Joe> audited. Right now we use consolehelper on distributions that
    Joe> support it (Red Hat, LinuxPPC, TurboLinux, ...) because it's
    Joe> pretty well tested.

    >> But ya, I agree, that if a user wants to run an arbitrary
    >> program as root (or another user) should have a nice tool to
    >> magically create the desktop files for them.  I have some ideas
    >> already.

    Joe> I'm a little nervous about doing this, because most stuff
    Joe> really shouldn't be run as root. Stuff like helix-update, red
    Joe> carpet, the helix setup tools are exceptions to this and that
    Joe> should be reflected in the .desktop file.

Yah, this is what I meant. Those tools should have gsu in the exec
line of the desktop entry.

    Joe> Paranoia aside though, maybe we could put a checkbox in the
    Joe> desktop entry editor thingy that would wrap the command in a
    Joe> gsu.

Yah, this makes way more sense than writing a new tool.  It's probably
easiest to just insert into the exec field the string to run gsu.
Keeps the changes localized... of course you'd need to parse the exec
line when editing though (the 'real' command etc) so that you can deal
with deselecting the checkbox.  The other way would involve a new
field in the desktop file, say run-as=root or whatever and changes to
the thing that does the exec for the entry to handle the new option.

-- 
Vince Hodges                             "Beware geeks bearing diffs"
vhodges@home.com 
http://members.home.com/vhodges/