gksudo without sudo

[Tim Frost]

On Thu, 2006-02-09 at 11:30 -0700, Tom Smith wrote:
> I'm a bit new to Ubuntu so I wanted to discuss this here before
> submitting bug reports or whatnot...
> 
> I performed an "expert" install to minimize the number of packages that
> were installed in the "Desktop" setup. Doing so, sudo wasn't configured
> by default--that is, I was prompted for and entered a root password and
> no accounts (other than root) were added to sudoers.
> 
> The problem is that when running Synaptics, for example, from the Gnome
> menu (as a non-root user), I'm unable to access it--it's using gksudo to
> launch. Many other admin-related menu entries are doing the same thing.
> If I run the same command from the command line using gksu it works
> fine--for example, I'd execute "gksu synaptics" and it would load after
> I entered the root password.
> 
> The fix is simple... I just needed to add myself to sudoers and gksudo
> began working.

The official fix for this is available.  To quote the bot on the #ubuntu
IRC channel:

No working sudo after expert install? as root: 
	addgroup --system admin
	echo "%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL" >> /etc/sudoers 
	adduser your_normal_username admin


> 
> I don't fully understand Ubuntu's security architecture yet so I'm not
> sure if this is expected behavior or an oversight. With the way the
> system (Gnome, mainly) is currently configured, it requires that one
> configure sudo in order to run any of the admin apps from the Gnome menus.
> 
> Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
> 

Tim