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Month: February 2011

Re: [trinity-devel] KDESU

From: Darrell Anderson <humanreadable@...>
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2011 16:57:29 -0800 (PST)
Thanks for the response.

I'm using Slackware. Slackware does not restrict root access like Ubuntu.

Some time ago I filed bug reports 393 and 394 to address the issues.

Darrell


--- On Thu, 2/24/11, Keith Daniels <keithwdaniels@...> wrote:

> From: Keith Daniels <keithwdaniels@...>
> Subject: [trinity-devel] KDESU
> To: "trinity-devel" <trinity-devel@...>
> Date: Thursday, February 24, 2011, 11:00 PM
> > Re: KDESU
> > From: Darrell Anderson <humanreadable@...>
> > Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2010 19:52:20 -0800 (PST)
> 
> > Some things I noticed when using kdesu to open Kate.
> 
> > 1. In the password dialog box there was no check box
> to remember the
> > password.
> 
> > 2. For my root user I have Kate configured to use a
> pink background
> > rather than white. That serves as a simple reminder I
> am working as
> > root and not as a normal user. Yet in Trinity, after
> launching through
> > kdesu, Kate did not display the background as pink but
> white.
> > Superficially that seems to indicate Kate inherited
> the normal user's
> > properties rather than root's.
> 
> > 3. After running kdesu to open Kate, I continually
> received DCOP
> > error messages of the effect that KLauncher could not
> be reached via
> > DCOP. Basically I had to restart my desktop session
> thereafter to
> > launch apps.
> 
> > Comments? Confirmations?
> 
> 
> Hi Darrell
> 
> It, doesn't look like you can respond to archive post that
> were not
> delivered directly to your mail box.  I hope this
> kludge I'm making
> works and you get this post.
> 
> I am assuming you are using Ubuntu or Debian.  For
> this problem I
> think they are a lot alike.  I am running Ubuntu.
> 
> When I was a webmaster I kept doing the same thing over and
> over and
> got different results every time.  <grin> This
> problem is sorta like
> that.  Slight differences in how you set your system
> up make this
> problem give different results for different computers.
> 
> Yes this is confirmed.  Here is what I think is going
> on from days,
> weeks, months.... of experimenting and banging my head on
> the wall.
> 
> When you kdesu, kdesudo, etc to root you are not using
> roots copy of
> Kate you are using yours.  Sorta like you do when you
> use fish or sftp
> to access a remote computer using xwindows.  That
> means you don't
> "really" have roots complete environment and if the
> settings are not
> exactly right you have all kinds of problems like you
> mention.  You
> have the permissions to go anywhere and open and write to
> all files
> but there are a lot of other "settings" you don't receive
> the benefits
> of, like you would as a real root user.  I noticed
> that it seemed like
> half the configurations were stored in roots config files
> and half in
> mine.  Kate wasn't bad but Konqueror was a pain to try
> to use like
> that.
> 
> I think the DCOP issue is a case where the DCOP server is
> seeing  some
> of the signals or request from the root xserver and when it
> queries
> Klauncher it goes to root instead of your server--and roots
> Klauncher
> is not installed.  In fact as little of the Xwindows
> and KDE software
> as possible is installed in roots xwindow system.
> 
> The Root Whackers "had" to leave a place for root to
> exist--since
> Linux was basically built around the concept--but they did
> strip as
> many of the root environment variables as they could
> (including all
> KDE and DBus settings) and yet still have Linux run. For
> example both
> KDEHOME AND KDEDIR are not in roots environmental
> variables. This has
> caused some problems and caused issues like you had. 
> I think that
> they will sooner or later break Linux by all the
> contortions they go
> through in the code to prevent users from playing with
> their root.  I
> hope I'm around to laugh at them.  <grin>
> 
> I decided to find a way to run root's version of Kate,
> Konqueror and
> kcontrol so I could have control of their environment and
> configuration files.  I did it and it works real well
> for the regular
> work you need to do as root.  There are still at few
> weird things here
> and there that I have not fixed like not being able to run
> the
> "Configure Konqueror" application "consistently" without
> actually
> logging in as root in a real xwindow session. Sometimes it
> works
> sometimes it doesn't.  But I am working on it
> 
> It's nice to finally have my Root applications (run from my
> xwindow
> session) that have their own colors, title bar, icons,
> etc.--which
> helps keep me from thinking I am in one of my local
> applications--which usually are also open at the same
> time.  Like you,
> I'm sure.  Also it makes it easier to drop to root on
> my system then
> ssh to one of my other computers and run the other
> computer's root
> version of a Xwindow application.
> 
> I also finally figured out how to run an xwindow session as
> root and
> that really helped to figure out how to make the local su
> to root apps
> work correctly.
> 
> If you are not against working with the full power of root,
> (Though
> not logged in to xwindows as root) I will tell you what I
> did to solve
> the problem.
> 
> The basic idea is that you have to create a root password,
> fix and
> export a bunch of environmental variables that were left
> out, install
> some missing software, fix some permission issues and
> finally give
> yourself permission to use everyone else's xwindow server
> on that
> computer (su to root doesn't give you that).
> 
> After that there are various ways to run the root
> programs.  I prefer
> su.  The icons I use run local scripts that let me
> setup a lot more
> options than Klanucher would.
> 
> Here is the su part of my kate script.
> 
> su -l -c '/opt/kde3/bin/kate --caption ROOT' root
> 
> This starts up Kate a LOT faster than using "kdesu kate"
> from an icon.
> The only draw back is that I have an extra terminal window
> open as
> well as Kate.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> Keith
> 
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