On 5/28/2017 11:51 AM, Ken Moffat wrote:
On Sun, May 28, 2017 at 11:26:24AM -0600, Alan Feuerbacher wrote:
Why would you start X as root, except to test the first time ? Each
user runs his or her preferred desktop.
I don't fully know, except that I'm thinking I'm still in testing mode. I'm
still going back and testing software that was built in chroot, but could
only be tested (make check etc.) in the fully booted system.
I'm still a real newbie at this.
Until you have evaluated the dangers of what you are doing, doing
things as root is always a dangerous idea. Yes, I build things as
root - worst case I'll throw away a new system, or more likely I'll
have to restore from backups. But *running* desktop applications as
root is very dangerous. I test X as root about once in a blue moon
and I can't remember the last time I did that.
I'll certainly remember that. Until relatively recently I've always been
a dumb user of Unix/Linux, and had sysadmins to take care of the system.
Now that I'm retired and doing this myself, it's a whole new ballgame.
Sometimes I let root build the new system in chroot as far as
firefox (e.g. earlier this month: I was expecting problems with
gcc-7.1 and wanted to keep a usable browser). But then I booted
that new system for the second time (first time was just my normal
desktop plus openss{l,h}, mail, Pythons, icu, fcron, rsync, etc - I
needed to check the base system worked before continuing). And each
time the only thing that root did was use a tty. All the normal
testing was done as a user. Of course, root might have had to run
with init=/bin/bash if userspace was severely broken - but that only
happens rarely.
I see. Obviously that's stuff I'll keep in mind.
As I'm becoming more comfortable with building LFS, and all manner of
requirements, I'm becoming more aware of these issues. So my next
project will be an exercise in seeing how well I can build BLFS stuff
according to "the book" -- build as user lfs, install as root.
Next project: build LFS Stable Version 8.0-systemd using everything I've
learned from building Version 8.0.
Alan
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