Lock Screen Server 12.10

[Tom H]

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 5:42 AM, Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 05.02.2013, 22:35 -0500 schrieb Tom H:
>> On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 5:53 PM, Joep L. Blom <jlblom at neuroweave.nl> wrote:
>>> On 05/02/13 11:07, Oliver Grawert wrote:
>>>>
>>>> running your desktop as root is calling for trouble, the desktop apps
>>>> are neither designed nor tested in that context and are likely to not
>>>> function in the expected manner ...
>>>>
>>>> ... the simple answer is, don't log in as root under X, use pkexec (or
>>>> the obsolete gksu) to execute apps you need to run as root from a
>>>> normally logged in user account instead.
>>>
>>> I agree of course with your remark about trying to br god: bas idea!.
>>> However, since when is gksu ( and even su?) obsolete?
>>> I've never used pkexec and why is that an improvement?
>>> For the record: I seldom use gksu but always use su -.
>>
>> Oliver didn't say that "su" is obsolete, only that "gksu" is obsolete.
>>
>> I didn't know that "gksu" is obsolete...
>>
>> The difference between gksu/gksudo (they're the same by default, at
>> least on Ubuntu) and pkexec is that pkexec's permissions are more
>> granular because they use polkit's rules.
>>
> sorry if the words confused anyone, gksu is not being used in any (but
> two that were just fixed in raring) apps in the default desktop install
> since a few releases already. gksu has massive probs with accessibility
> (grabs the whole screen and steals the focus, so screen readers as well
> as onscreen keyboards have issues). since all apps in the default
> desktop switched to use pkexec instead, gksu will be gone from the
> default installation with 13.04 ... if you dont want to manually install
> gksu all the time, better get used to the preinstalled pkexec ...
>
> the one disadvantage of pkexec is that unlike su/gksu it doesnt keep an
> authentication token for 10 minutes so all subsequent authentications in
> a script or app will pop up the password dialog again ...
>
> hope that clearifies it, indeed there is nothing wrong with using gksu,
> but you will have to manually install it i the future and it hasnt been
> actually used in the distro default setup for a while ...

Thanks.

Regarding the gksu authentication token, if you use "auth_admin_keep"
polkit also has one (IIRC a 5-minute one).