RE: Super User Launcher

[Pedro Corte-Real <lreal riff fe up pt>]

sudo is not su. Su lets you become root or some other user if you know
the password. Sudo let's you exec all or just some programs as root if 
your have the right permissions and only prompts you for your own pass.

On Ter, 16 Mar 1999 21:18:40 Vincent Harvey wrote:
> What is this "runas" you speak of. No runas program on my machine (sudo is su, so runas is ra?). Will it basicly run a program with root priviliges, but not AS the root user. Like, if i use "runas gnorpm", will it use my themes, and my general gnome UI choices?
> 
> What I was thinking that a privileged user like myself, or maybe multiple users would wan't to run gmc, like with "gnome-run -s gnorpm" (-s being a switch to make it try to run it with root privilages.). This would popup a dialog box that I could type in the root password in. If it was right, I can get gnorpm with root privileges, and I can install programs.
> 
> With this method, I could avoid the terminal (silly, but the terminal might scare new users, and opening a terminal just to launch an app can get annoying), and keep my themes consistent with the rest of the desktop. Also, I was thinking one way around this could just be to link the user's ~./gnome directory into the /root directory, but this would not allow multiple priveleged users.
> 
> Finally, the whole thing against setuid'ing the hole thing root is becuase I might wan't to avoid some dumb program screwing up the hole system with those types of privileges. NOTE: this last argument is kinda week.
> 
> On Tue, 16 Mar 1999 12:53:08 C Wayne Huling wrote:
> > Fox, Kevin M writes:
> > > Would it be better to just keep the password in memory, I hate the idea of
> > > having root passwords lieing around...
> > > 
> > 
> > What is this preoccupation with the root password?  Make the gui
> > setuid root, and then have root read only files which list the users,
> > and the programs which these users may actually run as root.  This
> > would involve some sort of login as root to setup the intial
> > configuration.  Look at the source for sudo or runas...  
> > 
> > 
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> 
> 
> 	--------------
> 	Vincent Harvey
> 	http://www.mcs.net/~vharvey (don't go here now, still problems)
> 
> 
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