Desktop Entry Spec : RootRequired entry

[Waldo Bastian]

On Friday 02 September 2005 15:30, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> On Friday 02 September 2005 14:02, Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
> > Waldo Bastian schreef:
> > ...
> >
> > > What I would like to see clearified is whether, in case of
> > > "RootRequired=Yes", the menu system should do whatever is needed to run
> > > the program as root, or whether that is the responsibility of the
> > > application itself. In KDE the menu system typically calls kdesu to run
> > > the application as root when it indicates that it requires root, but
> > > there are also cases where an application is started with normal user
> > > privileges but which will require the root password later on.
> > >
> > > So I think something is needed that covers the following options:
> > >
> > > 1) start normally, no root required
> > > 2) start as root, root required
> >
> > These look useful and can use desktop/distro specific means to get root,
> > or simply be hidden if a menu implementation does not provide a way to
> > get root.
> >
> > > 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?
>
> [SNIP]
>
> > 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.

I should note that I don't care too much whether 3) is covered as well, since 
this only covers a very few cases and KDE already has a KDE specific key 
that's able to handle it, so if nobody else cares about it I don't mind.

I just wanted to make clear that there is a subtle distinction between asking 
"does the application need root access?" and asking "should the menu system 
start the application as root?" The spec should make clear which question it 
answers.

Cheers,
Waldo

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