On Sun, 2003-03-16 at 11:55, Buchan Milne wrote: > On Sun, 16 Mar 2003, cybercfo wrote: > > > ------- Additional Comments From [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2003-03-16 20:40 ------- > > > > Because people should not be logging in to the gui as root. There are many > > other ways to accomplish running gui tools as root including running from su > > terminal, sudo, mcc, etc. so logging in to gui as root should be completely > > unnecessary. > > There is only one thing I can think of that would be easier by logging in > as root, and I have actually done this before, and that is resizing /home > with diskdrake. > > Anyway, you can use the GUI tool (Mandrake Control > Center->Hardware->Display Manager Chooser) to choose kdm or gdm which have > the same functionality they had in 9.0. > > The only *possible* validity your bug could have is if you wanted kdm to > be the default over mdkkdm, but that would be disregarded anyway, since > Mandrakesoft obviously wanted to accomplish some goals with mdkkdm, such > as making it more difficult to log in as root. > > BTW, I have not logged in as root on any of my own machines in X in a few > years. The only time I have had to log in as root directly the machine was > in a state where it would not run X anyway ... > > (The only reason I have done it recently was when helping a newbie resize > his /home partition, and I don't like frightening newbies with the command > line ...). > > Buchan
Buchan, I'll give you one scenario where I log in as root all the time... Install fests. I'm sure all of these people don't want a user james on their box....another is when a friend calls up and says... It won't work can you help... I log in as root so I don't have to keep asking them for the root password... once is enough this way. As for the very real problem here. It comes with upgrades. (if an upgrade shouldn't be done then remove the option from the installer.) If you are running kdm now, with users hidden ( a prudent move I might add.) and you upgrade.... You can't log in as anyone! It keeps the old settings and won't allow you to login period. (had this happen with one of our senior programmers and boy was he pissed .... kept talking about getting his solaris box back *grin*) There it is a very real problem. The only way to fix it is to log in as root from tty1 and edit by hand kdmrc (or edit /etc/sysconfig/desktop to say gdm not kdm) and restart X Not a very user friendly option. IMAO (yes the A does stand for what you think *grin*) it's a case of fixing what wasn't really broken. But that's not my say. James
