Desktop Entry Spec : RootRequired entry

Jasper Huijsmans jasper at xfce.org
Fri Sep 2 17:41:04 EEST 2005


Benedikt Meurer schreef:
> Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
> 
>>>>>3) start normally, root required (e.g. gnome-terminal -e su)
>>>>
>>>>I think this could be indicated in the description/title. Why should the
>>>>menu system care about this?
>>>
>>>>I don't really see the need for 3). Would you handle that differently
>>>>than (1)?
>>>
>>>If the menu system knows that the user isn't authorized to use the
>>>root account, ithe menu system should hide it because it doesn't make
>>>sense to show such entry.
>>
>>Ok, that would be nice. How can a menu system know this though?
> 
> 
> For su it's easy, just check if the user is in the group 'wheel' or
> 'root' (depending on the system). 

I have the root password, how do you know that? The limitation for su to 
the wheel group is only in the BSD's I think.

>For sudo it'd require parsing the
> sudoers file.
> 

The example was running gnome-terminal with su somewhere in the 
arguments. We're not going to parse all the command lines, are we? You 
are also already special casing su and sudo, but programs may have other 
means to gain root priviledges, isn't it?

It seems to me that the spec would be better of starting small, with 
only 'RequiresRoot=Yes|No'.

	Jasper



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