GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 654184
Nautilus takes too long to load when opened by gksudo
Last modified: 2012-11-12 12:37:26 UTC
Reproducable. Open Nautilus in a terminal with gksudo, the loading wheel spins too long, in this time user can't click on folders to open them in order to work. Nautilus opened by user via terminal immediately loads, ready to work and without any messages. Reported there first. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/805682
You shouldn't run nautilus as root. Whats probably happening here is that not only is nautilus getting started, but also a session bus for root, and diverse session services, etc etc.
No bug by design here...
@Matthias Clasen: Sometimes, GUI programs have to be run as root. There are occasional instances where Nautilus is useful to run as root. This seems to be a new problem; it did not used to cause this problem when running as root.
(In reply to comment #3) > @Matthias Clasen: Sometimes, GUI programs have to be run as root. Provide examples?
@André: Sorry, my wording should have been "useful" rather than "have to". However, you asked for examples. (1) I have a backup program that needs to access all users' files. (2) There are many tutorials that show using Nautilus or gedit as root. They are far more flexible and useful, specifically to new users, than trying to use the terminal. Programs such as vi and nano, and command lines, are confusing to people accustomed to using GUI programs (ex-Windows users particularly come to mind). I admit to being puzzled as to why a GUI program cannot work in root -- after all, root is simply another user. Especially when run with gksudo (or the equivalent sudo -H), perhaps you could explain to us why these new restrictions have been added? Were they for technical or design reasons? Thank you.
(In reply to comment #5) > (1) I have a backup program that needs to access all users' files. I know you generically wrote "GUI programs" before, but Matthias refered specifically to "Nautilus". > (2) There are many tutorials that show using Nautilus or gedit as root. I cannot fix wrong tutorials from GNOME2 times and stuff on the internet is not a good reason to block technical progress IMHO. :) Average users could switch the user and log in as root if tutorials recommend using GUI apps like Nautilus (not-advanced users I'd say) for something, but on the other hand the same tutorials recommend to enter cryptic commands from a "terminal" window (advanced users I'd say)? Sounds like a contradiction. > explain to us why these new restrictions have been added? I don't see any "restrictions" yet.
Thanks for the replies, André (comment #6). > Average users could switch the user and log in as root... This is explicitly against the security model of Ubuntu and some other distributions. Ubuntu is unsupported if you log into root. That is why they encourage sudo and gksudo. > I don't see any "restrictions" yet. I am referring to the restriction that you may not use Nautilus with gksudo.