Re: How to suppress the annoying warning message for gmc??

[Craig Orsinger <orsingerc epg-gw1 lewis army mil>]

On 21-Aug-00 Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero wrote:
> orsingerc@epg-gw1.lewis.army.mil (2000-08-21 at 1221.57 -0700):
> <RANT IGNORE="at-will">

        [snip]

> There is a better solution: have a console always open, where you
> type "/bin/su - root". But remember to mark it as such: different
> desktop, different colors, whatever that calls your attention. No
> need to su in and out like mad.

        While I appreciate the suggestion, it's not going to help
when I need several windows or whatever running as root. I'd need
several of these consoles.

>> > It's a shame if that warning is now disableable... If I had written that
>> > code, it would've shown the message then quit if UID==0 ;-)
>>         Like I said, if you want to keep fools out of root, don't
>> give them the password. For anyone else, certainly anyone who has
>> any business being a system administrator, the first few warnings 
>> should be enough.
> 
> A home user is his own admin. And most of them will fuck the system
> like in Windows, and do not care at all cos they believe is normal and
> there is no other way to do it. It is like all those guys that install
> a new app and reboot, when most of times you do not need at all. The
> right way is to spread the right methods, not just warn and let the
> life go wrong.

        A home user has to learn sometime - otherwise, making him
only use "su" isn't going to help. There are just as many ways to
screw up a system from the command line, as you have noted below.
Even unsophisticated users get annoyed at being shown the same 
useless (in the sense that they tell you nothing about the current
state of the system) warning boxes over and over again. In addition,
most of the more polished Linux distributions will now suggest 
during installation that at least one ordinary user account be
created.

> Only root user should have the root password, OK. I do that at Univ,
> none of the roots share password with others, but we all know how to
> break in other machines (leaving traces or doing lot of work not to,
> aka reboot, clearing BIOS password). I guess that other places, the
> measures would be even stronger (I am speaking about club machines).
> But home users...
> 
>>         Actually, one alternative would be to have a root environment
>> that does not include mc or gmc - say a command like: 
>>         gnome-session --without-mc
>>         or something like that. This would give an administrator
>> the ability to do most of what he'd be doing in a root account,
>> and would probably avoid alot of the dangers you're concerned
>> about.
> 
> Yes! And another --demo-root-is-bad and --root-complain. The first to
> 'demo' what "rm -rf . /" does (note the spaces) and the second for

        "rm -rf . /" can be run from su. I've seen it done.
Sooner or later you have to learn how to do these things right,
or you won't be able to do them for long. In a way, this problem
will take care of itself ;-)

> showing a big smile while playing a loud laugh and "You break it!",
> usefull in the reinstall. Also, if possible, mail everyone in your
> mailbox with "I fucked my system cos I ran as root" shame mail. ;]

        I usually stick with more low-tech approaches. Like
threatening to bend a keyboard around their heads if they do 
that again.

> root is the root of all problems. ;P
> 
> root should be treated as fire, you can use it, but right. You do not
> go burning things, cos you will buy new ones if they do not resist,
> you use fire, not play with it (circus not covered by this rule). Of
> course, some people need to feel the burn to learn.

        Agreed. The problem is that if you design a system 
primarily for unsophisticated users, you end up with a
Macintosh. Macs are wonderful systems for drawing pictures
and designing documents, but I wouldn't want to use one as
a server.

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Date: 21-Aug-00  Time: 14:49:11

Craig Orsinger                  (email: <orsingerc@epg-gw1.lewis.army.mil>)
Logicon Advanced Technology
Bldg. 8B28                      "Just another megalomaniac with ideas above his
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