On 15/5/2011, at 1:10pm, Antoine Martin wrote: > ... > Note that you sent this to the parti/xpra mailing list, and not winswitch's. > I am cross-posting so those who are interested can follow it up there but > please remove parti-discuss when replying as this is not related to the > partiwm project.
I hope I'm replying correctly, cc'd in case I'm not subscribed. > Now, about the use of sudo: although I understand your concerns, my goal is > to keep the instructions readable and simple. > Those like you who do not wish to run the 3 lines of shell as root should be > able to work out where (gk)sudo needs to be added instead. > > I much prefer telling the user in clear steps what is going on (ie: become > root) so they can use whatever alternative they want (su, ssh, "terminal as > root", etc), rather than forcing them to use sudo 3 times. I guess it is also > a matter of personal taste. > > my 2p: people who erase filesystems with typos should not have root access. > Similar story for those who do not exit the root shell. > >> All the instructions below must be run as root, so open a terminal and >> become root: >> sudo su - >> Then you go on to give the commands that should be run. Yes, but in the interests of making your instructions more readable, you have given instructions to proceed in the "more dangerous" way. Whilst this may not matter to experienced sys admins (who will likely skip through them, anyway, and who will care less about the formatting), inexperienced users are more likely to follow the instructions verbatim, and it's them who're more likely to get in trouble. So it kinda feels to me like you've left a loaded gun on the table, and you're telling us, "well, those who don't know gun safety shouldn't be touching guns that people leave lying around". It's only those who don't know any better who will put themselves in a position to get themselves in trouble. I think it's kinda unfair to say "people who [make mistakes] should not have root access" considering how Linux is now a general-user operating system. Housewives and old folks install Ubuntu on their PCs, and expect to be able to do useful things with it. Watching the WinSwitch videos, it seems like running an app from your desktop PC to you laptop is just the kind of "useful thing" a general end-user might wish to do - I rather understood the whole point of WinSwitch was to make this easier and more accessible than (as experienced users might do) exporting DISPLAY and running xpra at the command line. It seems to me like you could avoid this debate by simply replacing: All the instructions below must be run as root, so open a terminal and become root: sudo su - Then you go on to give the commands that should be run. with: The following instructions below must be run in a terminal with root privileges. Use su or sudo with all suitable precautions. This leaves it to the user to decide how to proceed, and the lesson on which is best can be left to generic beginners' forums. That's a more suitable place, and a user who doesn't know how to do each must go away and ask there in order to have the perquisite foreknowledge before he's able to continue. Stroller. _______________________________________________ Parti-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.partiwm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/parti-discuss
