Re: GNOME Usability Improvements - Fix the window manager!

["James M. Cape" <jcape jcinteractive com>]

Tom Gilbert wrote:
> 
> * Ronald de Man (deman@win.tue.nl) [990805 21:59]:
> > On Thu, Aug 05, 1999 at 02:58:33AM +0200, Matthias Warkus wrote:
> > > +++ Thu, Aug 05, 1999 at 02:54:06AM +0200 +++
> > > Ronald de Man e-mails me. Film at 11. Reply right now, after the break.
> >
> > > [gnome-ppp]
> > >
> > > > So the novice user reboots to windows.
> > >
> > > (I don't care about that kind of rhetorics, BTW.) What do you want? Do
> > > you want gnome-ppp to be setuid? It would have got to be audited for
> > > that, and of course there are already enough setuid programs on an
> > > average Linux system, the less, the better.
> >
> > Gnome-ppp could ask the user for the root password first.
> > Less dangerous than a newbie doing a su and fiddling with files in /etc.
> 
> And so users who are not admins cannot use it???
> 
> Don't forget, not all systems are single-user systems, where the user has
> access to the root account.

The sysadmin can make the pppd executable -rwsr-x--- owned by root.dip,
and add the users who should be allowed to run it to the dip group.

And obviously, gnome-ppp should not prompt the user for root permissions
if it doesn't need it.

    Jim Cape
    http://www.jcinteractive.com

    "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them
     pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
        -- Winston Churchill