On Thursday 22 February 2007 17:00, Angus MacGyver wrote:
> Now taken a look at those settings, tweaked and rebooted but still a
> normal user cannot hibernate the system...
>
> Please can someone point me in the right direction.
I would like to offer some philosophy, which when properly considered,
may
prove to be helpful ...
... this problem (and others like it, I'll explain in a minute) come up
frequently because of our common windoze heritage--- a mindset that a
personal computer is a single user application launcher. It seems on the
surface that any user should be able to automatically mount or unmount a
device... have access to all hardware ports, and be able to *suspend* or
*hibernate* the system! In fact just the opposite is true.
Only root should be able to suspend the system. Only root should be
able to
hibernate a system. Only root should be able to mount/umount devices, and
only root should have access to the system's hardware ports.... in fact, only
the kernel should have access to the system's hardware ports.
Any true operating system will restrict system services (particularly
those
which bring the system *down* ) to the kernel and the root authority---for
any truly multiuser multitasking operating system. To say this another way,
no individual *general* user on the system should be able to stop the system
nor do anything within their virtual address space that would result in
stopping the system---- this is assuming that there are *other* users on the
system (maybe even just system processes) that should not be stopped just
because the user wants to suspend. Its not a personal computer... its a
system.
Unix and unix-like operating systems (including Linux) are true
operating
systems in every sense of the word (very much unlike windoze). Even though
the machine may only have ONE user logged on *ever*, it is still a multi-user
system which restricts the shutdown of the system to root. Many folks (and
some distros) bypass this, and its a mistake. My belief is that folks need to
understand what a real OS is. Those of us from the old IBM VM days, or the
older UNIX days, realize that a computer is a system which should not
arbitrarily crash, and which should not be subject to downtime do to the
actions of any single user--- including shutdown, suspend, or hibernate.
All of my systems (including my laptop) restrict all admin activities
to
root, including shutdown among many others. If root access is required my
users su to root (if authorized) and perform the function with authority,
permission, security, safety and logging. What I find is that people moving
over to Linux from windoze will try to make Linux look and behave like
windoze.... and thereby missing the whole point of moving to Linux in the
first place. Some folks even take this to extremes (due to misunderstanding)
and run *all the time* logged in as root... the way some windoze users always
logon as administrator. The problem is that root on unix-like systems is
absolutely dangerous... unlike the semi bogus administrator logon of windoze.
If you force yourself to work within the restrictions of the unix system then
the restrictions of the system will protect you and even become your friend.
Just words to the wise.
--
Kind regards,
M Harris <><
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