newbie user/root dycotomy

[Ari Torhamo]

to, 2005-01-20 kello 21:50 -0800, Chuck Vose kirjoitti:
> Why sudo nautilus is a no-no:
> root can do anything, and while nautilus isn't prone to some of the
> things like `chown -R root:root *` it is vulnerable to the "I don't
> know what this file is but it's big" syndrome and other such silly
> ideas. 

Hmm... I'm not quite sure about this but I would think that my system is
in bigger danger when I do things outside my home directory using
terminal than would be the case if I could do the same using Nautilus. I
think so because I'm used to work in grapchical envinronment. I'm used
to copy, move, rename, open, edit and run files there. I work faster
there too and don't often make silly mistakes.

> The problem is really more along the lines that, since nautilus
> is rather largish, it tends to stay open for long periods of time. 

I was suggesting that Nautilus could have a sudo property (sorry, if
this is not really English). You might either click a button which would
change Nautilus to sudo state - so to speak, or this would happen
automatically when you try to take actions that require root
priviledges. Ofcourse in both cases a window would first pop up to ask
you for your password. There might also be a warning text in this window
to remind you about the risks of proceeding.

> The
> whole reason sudo is a one shot thing is because people tend to make
> mistakes given enough time; shortening the time is one proven way of
> preventing this and nautilus undoes this progress.

So why not make it work the same way in Nautilus. After giving your
password you would have a limited period of time to act as super user
and after that you would be asked to give your password again.

Maybe there are some technical reasons why this couldn't be implemented
in Nautilus (without much work and lot of problems?), but from the users
point of view I can't see any downsides in having an option to do more
of the system management in the graphical envinronment. But maybe
there's more to this than I can see - I welcome any corrections and
englightements :-)

Regards,

Ari