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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Again - UI
From:       Rik Hemsley <rik () kde ! org>
Date:       2000-04-24 17:19:58
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#if Richard Moore
> Well, I think that can be fixed by a simple change in terminology. If
> we always refer to the 'adminstration password' and define it as 'a
> password that you need to enter to perform an administration task',
> the concept becomes a lot clearer. Logging in as root becomes entering
> adminstration mode.
> 
> How does this sound to you?

Fine. It makes sense too. Users know what an administrator is.

I'm just keen to see distributors take advantage of UNIX's user/group
system to provide the admin-user enough power to do what they want,

KDE helps with this a bit, by asking for a password whenever an
app requires special priviledges, but this could be made so much
more simple by distributors. Just ask the person who installs
if they're the administrator. If so, let them log in once, as
themselves. Don't force them to log in as root or type root's
password every time they need to add a drive to /etc/fstab (via
a KDE utility, of course ;)

While this might horrify certain admins (like me, until I thought
about it), it's not such a nightmare.

For example, I hear so many times people telling me they've
logged in as root via xdm - so are busy running _all_ KDE apps
as root. Now that's scary. I'd much rather the admin-user gets
restricted power all the time than absolute power some of the
time. Surely this makes more sense.

BTW, by 'restricted power all the time', I mean that the power
they are given is regulated through the interfaces of the admin-
-apps they use. So they can run ksysv and edit their runlevels.
They don't just get dropped to a shell, or worse, get dropped
into KDE, logged in as root.

Cheers,
Rik

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