Gnome replacement for kdesu

[Loban Rahman <loban enigma caltech edu>]

I was wondering if there will be or is a Gnome replacement for kdesu? 

The kdesu program allows non-root users to run programs that ideally need
root access (e.g. gnorpm, up2date, etc.). If I type 

	kdesu -c progname

it checks if the user is root, and if not, prompts for the root password.
It then uses the su program to start progname as root. It also has a number
of nifty facilities, including "remembering your root password for a
particular program" using the kdesud daemon. So, since I run gnorpm pretty
often, I can ask kdesu to "remember" my root password for the current 
session. I find this particularly useful, because without it I either have
to log out and back in as root, or use the commandline to su to root.

I just downloaded the source, and it looks like the only thing kde-specific
about it is that it uses the Qt library. In fact, I have it working on my
Gnome-system by installing nothing extra but the qt library. Hence, it should
be very easy to "port" to gnome. I'd actually do it myself, but I thought
I'd first ask on this list in case someone is doing / planning to do it
already.

IMHO, gnomesu (or whatever it's called) should be part of the gnome-core
package, and the desktop files for programs that should use it should
be updated appropriately. However, instead of just placing

	Exec=gnomesu progname

in the desktop file, there should be an extra option added, e.g.

	Su=true

which will tell the launcher to execute "gnomesu $Exec" instead of just
$Exec. That way if the person had not installed gnomesu, the desktop
file still works. Also, instead of having a seperate daemon handle
rememboring passwords (like kdesud), it could be integrated into the
Gnome session manager.

What do you people think?

	= L


PS. Do you think it's worth making this more generic? I.e. su'ing into
any particular user/group instead of just root?


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|   LOBAN AMAAN RAHMAN  <-- anagram of -->  AHA! AN ABNORMAL MAN!   |
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