Re: KDE run Dolphin as root?

[Gary L. Roach]

On 6/14/20 1:22 PM, Default User wrote:
On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 4:12 AM Marco Möller
<ta...@debianlists.mobilxpress.net> wrote:
On 09.06.20 23:55, Default User wrote:
(...)
Now, a final note.
When I did my main install, it was a day or two before the release of
Buster 10.0.  I immediately upgraded to Unstable.  But it is still
originally based upon Stretch.  It was set up with both root and user
passwords. And I use good quality, long passwords.
: )

Here's the point:
I can do everything requiring elevated privileges just by using the
user password, and sudo in a terminal as needed. Never need to use the
root password.

Well, when I did an alternate Buster Stable install on a spare drive,
I was surprised (not happily) that when running from that setup,
various programs demand the root password, and will not accept the
user password.  So, now I have to remember not one, but two "good"
passwords.  And try to determine which one is being asked for.  And
re-remember both every time they are changed.

I am guessing this has to do with a change made for Buster.  Perhaps
it is a "security thing".

Others might correct me, I am still learning and might be confused about
things, but this is how I understand the situation be now:
In the past I thought that upgrading from release to release would be
all what someone good desire, especially when the upgrade process is
well designed and not breaking things. The Debian team is really doing
an excellent job to care for the release upgrade not being likely to
break things.
I then noticed that a release upgrade brings in more than simply
upgrading many packages and renewing version numbers, the latter being
what the in-release upgrades already do. Worth noting is that in a new
release additionally old concepts are deprecated or substituted, and new
concepts become introduced! Besides you having mentioned systemd already
here giving you another example: remember the (in 2015 ?) announced
changes in the use of the root directory structure concerning the
philosophy on which data is supposed to land in which directory
("filesystem hierarchy standard"). For now there are introduced symbolic
links from the old directory locations to the new locations, so that
software will not break right away if still not updated to respect the
new concept. If you would for long time roll from release to release,
then I imagine that conceptual changes like this will not become visible
in your system, and some time in the future the backward compatibility
to old concepts might need to be cut. You coming from a Debian/stretch
installation and having rolled upgrades via Debian/buster to
Debian/bullseye might still not find these changes cleanly applied.
Therefore, in order to keep up also with the conceptional changes, it is
worth to consider a fresh installation as the alternative to a release
upgrade. This is why many of us maintain detailed notes on package
installations and system configurations, in order to be able to
re-install quickly and thus also being well prepared for a new release
installation instead of a rolling upgrade.
(You are more then welcome to correct me if I misunderstood things ;-) !)
Best wishes, Marco.


On Jun 10, 2020, 2:36 AM Andrei POPESCU, <andreimpope...@gmail.com> wrote:
You are making some claims above without providing even one example.

Well,  . . . yes.
There might be simple explanations and / or solutions for what you
experience...

Perhaps.  Problems can seem so simple, once they are solved.


On Jun 10, 2020, 4:12 AM, Marco Möller
<ta...@debianlists.mobilxpress.net> wrote:
Others might correct me, I am still learning and might be confused about
things, but this is how I understand the situation be now:
In the past I thought that upgrading from release to release would be
all what someone good desire, especially when the upgrade process is
well designed and not breaking things. The Debian team is really doing
an excellent job to care for the release upgrade not being likely to
break things.
I then noticed that a release upgrade brings in more than simply
upgrading many packages and renewing version numbers, the latter being
what the in-release upgrades already do. Worth noting is that in a new
release additionally old concepts are deprecated or substituted, and new
concepts become introduced! Besides you having mentioned systemd already
here giving you another example: remember the (in 2015 ?) announced
changes in the use of the root directory structure concerning the
philosophy on which data is supposed to land in which directory
("filesystem hierarchy standard"). For now there are introduced symbolic
links from the old directory locations to the new locations, so that
software will not break right away if still not updated to respect the
new concept. If you would for long time roll from release to release,
then I imagine that conceptual changes like this will not become visible
in your system, and some time in the future the backward compatibility
to old concepts might need to be cut. You coming from a Debian/stretch
installation and having rolled upgrades via Debian/buster to
Debian/bullseye might still not find these changes cleanly applied.
Therefore, in order to keep up also with the conceptional changes, it is
worth to consider a fresh installation as the alternative to a release
upgrade. This is why many of us maintain detailed notes on package
installations and system configurations, in order to be able to
re-install quickly and thus also being well prepared for a new release
installation instead of a rolling upgrade.
(You are more then welcome to correct me if I misunderstood things ;-) !)
Best wishes, Marco.
Marco, no correction is needed.  I agree with you. I run Unstable for
two main reasons:
1)  to get relatively up to date packages.
2)  to avoid reinstalling.
The trade-off?  Some instability, at least. And just plain
"messiness".  (Right now, I have 14 packages that can not, or should
not, be upgraded - until fixes are made by the developers.)
I do resent having to choose between old but stable, and new but unstable.

Unfortunately, as you have correctly observed, one will eventually
have to re-install.  For me, it is not a lot of fun.  In a better
world, things would "just work", and continue to "just work".  But
this is not a better world.  So, we just do the best we can.

Hi all,

I'M late getting into this but after reading through all of the 
missives, I have a few comments.

I assume that with respect to the original message that it should be 
obvious that the root user problem stems from the underlying Debian OS. 
Someone in the Debian hierarchy decided that root Dolphin was too much 
of a security risk. So the problem has propagated to at least a half 
dozen other distros (Ubuntu,Kubuntu, Mint) to name a couple.

This drives me nuts. You can talk about not using root with GUI's but I 
would like to see how long that lasts if you had my work flow. I am in 
and out of different user files constantly. Dolphin was my go to package 
for manipulating files until this latest "bright idea". Now it is near 
useless. You could not use Dolphin as root before unless you went into 
properties window for the Dolphin, picked the Application tab and then 
selected the Advanced Options button. You could then set the "Run as a 
different user" to root. After that selecting Dolphin popped a window to 
enter a password for root use or blank for normal use. This was not a 
process that a normal user ( what ever that may be ) would probably do. 
I am all for security until it starts to get in the way of usability. I 
have found no way around this mess.

As for as upgrades are concerned, I usually upgrade to say Buster and 
then go into my sources.list and change Buster - or what ever - to 
stable. This way when the upgrade comes down the line my system just 
slips right in; assuming that you upgrade you system a couple of times a 
week.

A word of warning. Qt4 has been dropped from Bullseye completely. I just 
upgraded to Bullseye and all of a sudden some of my software wouldn't 
compile any more. I just got finished reinstalling Buster to get around 
the problem and lost a chunk of data in the process.

For Pete Sake Debian let you users have some say over the use of root. 
The fact that Ubuntu over pampers its users, in this area, is one reason 
I don't like the distro.

Gary R.