GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 153399
doing root stuff as normal user without shell or any obscure methods - increasing usability with just a text box
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
In mandrake/redhat when accessing control panel as a normal user, it ask for root password to continue. This feature should be implemented all over gnome desktop. if a user doesnt have permission to do a tasks (copy, del, rename files, open a movie, play mp3, browser a folder...) rather than giving a message that "not enough permissions..." it should provide a text box to enter root password so that the operation can be continued without having to repeat it again from root/sudo account. Other information: I hope developers implement this feature all over gnome - so say if i have a movie saved as /mnt/disk1/movies/matrix.avi and the disk was mounted as root previously. Current behavior is as a normal user if I open totem movie player and browse to the path and open the movie - I get a error saying "not enough permissions". I therefore suggest that this behaviour can be modified to say a text box asking for root password to continue. If the authentication is successfull - the movie plays !
I think this is an unwise idea. Sometimes having root won't solve the problem (e.g. being root won't let you access protected network shares) and you also bump up the risk of the user damaging something by accident - e.g. the user tries to move /usr/lib/gcc-lib/ to their home directory, is prompted and then breaks various things. It also opens up a can of worms with regard to permissions too. You shouldn't be moving user things around as root. If you have to, then it suggests the orginal set up of your system was wrong (e.g. your disk was mounted with poorly chosen parameters).
Mandrake control panel has options to del/create disk partitions and a normal user can do that with root password :) To some extent I agree with your view. People sometimes can accidently/unknowingly do some really stupid things ;) Can this idea be reviewed by the Gnome HIG team if possible ?
On second thought, this feature can be implemented and made optional. A gconf setting (or something similar) allows to turn this feature on/off. It should be left to the distribution or user to decide whether they need to use this option or not. default can be set to off. Just a thought.
Hi, Bugzilla is mainly for tracking requests and bugs about a certain component or product. You are asking for something gnome-wide. In particular, this doesn't belong in the gnome-desktop product (which is a narrowly defined library, not "general Gnome stuff"). I could move it to the "general" product which was created for more system-wide stuff, but there is no maintainer for that product so your report would never get seen. The only way to really track this in bugzilla would be to open bugs against every product that needs to implement this. But I that would be very bad unless you *first* got the community to agree to such an idea. I suggest that if you really think this is a good idea (personally, I agree with Sitsofe), then bring it up on the desktop-devel-list mailing list. I'm going to resolve this bug as invalid, but if you don't like that you can reopen and reassign to the general product--just understand that there won't be anyone to see it. Hope that helps...
ya thanks. i think that will be the best option for this to get resolved :)