Re: su for dummies

[William Kendrick <nbs sonic net>]

Jonas said:
> 
> Another thing your solution lacks is the ability to switch users while a
> program is running. e.g. in Nautilus I'd sometimes like to change the
> effective user. Of course it's easyer said then done I suppose. The
> dialog would have to be ran in a new process as Gtk doesn't like SUID.
> (Disclaimer: I've never programmed for UNIX or Gnome).

Well, presumably the folks writing Nautilus could add a "change user"
command which would use "su" or something to spawn a NEW copy of
Nautilus (running as some different userid), and then close the current one.

It could even use commandline args to tell the new copy of Nautilus what
directory to start in, etc.  Even copy some temp files around with
filesystem browsing history information.  (However, most other preferences,
etc., should remain those of the user which Nautilus is now running as.)

Whew!

-bill!