Re: Kernelconfiguration with control-center ui ?

[Gleef <dzol virtual-yellow com>]

On Mon, 21 Dec 1998, Daniel Burrows wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 21, 1998 at 04:16:43PM -0500, Dan Newcombe scribbled:
> > > It would be totally awesome to have the kernelconfiguration made by a
> > > control-center like thing, that is, you have a tree menu on the left
> > > with all options (network,filesystems etc) in it and the options on the
> > > right.
> > 
> > make xconfig
> 
>   Yes, but I think his point is that you could integrate the tree-structure
> of the kernel configuration tool into the Gnome control-center.  Like the
> subtrees already there.  I think this is a good idea but it would be tough
> to do (and maybe tough to keep in sync with kernel development but I
> don't think the config structure changes very often..)

The underlying structure is pretty stable, but there is often changes to
the list of options in a section.


>   On another note, it just occured to me that there are a lot of times when
> a Gnome program might need superuser priviliges.  With the freeze it's
> probably too late, but could the next version of Gnome maybe include some
> sort of helper function to exec a program as root (or another user) which would
> either do it in a configurable way (ie, use su..sudo..whatever..prompt for
> a password..) or else pop up a dialog saying you don't have access to do X?
> In fact, I guess that could even be an app..gsudo..(this line of thought
> was sparked by the fact that only root--on my system at least--can run
> make *config in the kernel tree, even without saving..)

Programs like sudo encourage sloppy administration.  Sloppy administration
encourages security holes.  

Try this instead.  I have a group on my system called wheel, which
contains any account I want to do source installations from.  I made
/usr/src, /opt and /usr/local owned by root:wheel and group writable.
Now, in my user account, I can untar packages into /usr/src, compile them,
and install them in either /opt or /usr/local.  I also gave wheel write
privileges to ld.so.cache, so I can run ldconfig.  Users are still
prevented from system stuff, and I'm prevented from botching up /bin,
/sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, most of the /etc directory, and other things
that I don't want to risk screwing up.  The only thing I can't do is
install a package that automatically changes the owner on the file (like
many games).  If I somehow come across a trojan, I can't do most root
stuff, so my system is safer.

-Gleef