Re: [orca-list] creating a desktop shortcut to launch root

["B. Henry" <burt1iband gmail com>]

This is again very off topic, but as there are some tricks that are sometimes needed to have speech when 
working as root in the GUI I reckon it will 
pass this time.
First, and the main reason I am answering is to address why many people think sudo is a far better way to 
handle system critical opperations as 
compared with using root directly.
Using sudo has the advantage of timing out after a few minutes, 5 minutes in some distros, 15 in others, what 
ever you want to set up if you do not like 
your distro's default. This means a couple of things. A person walking by in your office, computer lab, or 
living room can't do mayhem with out knowing 
your password as often, e.g. you go to the bathroom and it's an emergency so you do not log out of y our root 
account. Many people never log out, so 
have a root account open to be accessed by both local and remote misscrients.
Sudo becomoes more useful in multi-user situations. An admin can be informed of any potential dangerous, or 
for that matter possitive changes a user who 
has sudo rights performs.  Sudo lets you fine tune what specific users can and can not do, and passwords can 
be waved for some commands, or all for that 
matter. 
All hackers know that if they can gain access to an account called root they can likely do what ever they 
want. On the other hand, trying to guess user 
names can be rather hard, and take a long time depending on the name in question.
Bad guys and gals go for the low hanging fruit, steal the car that is unlocked, etc; so make it harder/more 
time consuming to hack in to your box and 
most of the time the cracker crowd will leave you alone. Of course if someone is after you and or your box 
specifically, say they know you have plans 
for the great new noise canceling virtual reality helmet, credit cards with $50,000 limits, the only copy of 
the survailance vid  that shows them 
breaking in to the pet shop and stealing valuable parots...we are talking a different kettle of fish
     Now for your issues. 
Depending on your set-up you may need gksudo instead of gksu or visa versa to get speech with some apps.
I wiill take a look at the terminal thing specifically later tonight as I seem to remember having trouble as 
well. I think F123, and maybe manjaro has a 
root terminal launcher included by default. I thought this may have been part of gnome, not sure so again, 
will investigate and write back when/if I 
figure out anything interesting. 
 

-- 
     B.H.
   Registerd Linux User 521886


  Glenn / Lenny wrote:
Mon, Mar 09, 2015 at 10:35:49PM -0500

> Hi All,
> I want a desktop shortcut to put me in a terminal as root, so I don't have 
> to sudo -s or sudo su in all the time.
> On a gnome desktop, I used the applications key, and entered on "create new 
> launcher".
> In the command window, I typed:
> gksu gnome-terminal
> This makes Orca barely work, the only thing that seems to talk is the 
> character keys in the alt + F2  window.
> So I run:
> sudo restart gdm in the run command window
> and I get back to normal.
> I must say, I like the way Bananaian for the Banana PI do it, they did not 
> install sudo, and everything is as root.
> The reason I like it is because I always have to do sudo, and we cannot do 
> anything without typing sudo, and I don't know how sudo keeps people from 
> making mistakes, as we would make the same mistake whether we typed sudo or 
> not.
> I don't know if not having sudo makes the system more vulnerable to outside 
> attacks, which would be a good argument for keeping sudo.
> But at any rate, maybe the gksu gnome-terminal is not the best route for 
> what I am wanting to do, and if there is a better method, I will appreciate 
> any info.
> Thanks.
>
> Glenn 
>
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