I'm in the process of writing (and with help, packaging) a piece of software which needs to be executed as root. It happens to be a graphical app for configuring a laptop, and is the sort of thing that regular non-root users on a "single user" system would want to run.
Looking through installed programs in my Gnome menu, I see several apps like this which are wrapped with a call to Gksu. After talking with several different people, I see a few different preferred ways to gain root priviliges for apps like this... - gksu, users who want to really run it as root - su, users who refuse to install any excess X11 apps(?!) - sudo, users who've given themselves not-quite root access to certain apps or passwordless access (that's my camp) Anyway, I don't want my app to have a dependancy on gksu, as it technically doesn't have anything to do with my application, and from just talking to a few people appears to not be a universally accepted solution (I'm sure there are other alternatives that people prefer). So, my question is...is there, or should there be, some virtual package or system-wide or user-wide preference for gaining root priviliges under X11? What's the best current way to get this into the menu system with the least amount of pain for both the packager and the user? -- - David A. Riggs <riggs at csee dot wvu dot edu>
