[CentOS-docs] becoming root

[John]

On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 17:30 +0100, Ned Slider wrote:
> Rafał Ślubowski wrote:
> > 2008/4/6, Alan Bartlett <ajb.stxsl at googlemail.com>:
> > 
> >> Perhaps a mention of sudo and sudoers could also be made?
> > 
> > And consolehelper for GUI users.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Rafal
> 
> Hi Rafał,
> 
> I've had a quick look at consolehelper, and I'm still not sure I fully 
> understand how it works, at least enough to be able to write a section 
> on it. I understand it uses pam authentication when running a program 
> that requires root privileges and requests the root password 
> (system-config-services being an example), but I don't fully understand 
> how a user would use it, although I see any application could 
> potentially be configured in /etc/pam.d/
> 
> My initial intent was to write a short article to be useful to beginners 
> explaining how they could become root in order to achieve common tasks 
> (as opposed to logging in to the GUI desktop as root!) and highlight 
> some of the common pitfalls ('su' vs 'su -'), as much to serve as a 
> quick FAQ for forum helpers to link to rather than explaining it over 
> and over again. I fear it is beyond my abilities/knowledge to expand the 
> article much further than this.
> 
> How far such an article should be expanded, and whether we wish to cover 
> every conceivable method for launching something with root privileges is 
> probably not something for me to answer. That said, if you'd (or anyone) 
> like to expand on my initial remit and write an additional section, 
> please feel free :)
> 
> On an additional note, whilst investigating consolehelper, I also 
> noticed the "Run Command..." option on the KDE Menu (for those who don't 
> use KDE, it's a graphical run box that also allows one to specify a 
> different users credentials). I could see how that would be useful to 
> new users who are afraid of the command line, and should maybe be 
> included, but again I have no knowledge of the underlying mechanism by 
> which it works. Perhaps a gnome user could advise if gnome has similar 
> functionality?

As I remember Gnome did have an Application Launcher "run cmd". It is
not in the current or last versions. I do not know when it was took out.
Create Launcher is similiar. Ther's Lauch App in app picker?


> 
> Regards,
> 
> Ned
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS-docs mailing list
> CentOS-docs at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-docs
-- 
~/john

OpenPGP Sig:BA91F079