Re: Great SWT Program

In article <fcbe4873-5dcf-4806-8338-e98217b3ccd2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<twerpinator@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 16, 3:08 pm, blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[ snip ]

Well, I can't speak for Bent, but if I wanted to do something like
this, I'd use a shell for loop, something like this:

[snip "solution" unusable by non-programmers]

I don't have a lot of insight into what non-programmers find usable.
Apparently, however, some people who do understand basic programming
concepts find it very useful that typical Unix shells provide them.

[ snip ]

but the "-X" option of ssh means that one can run graphical applications.

I thought you folks hated to run graphical applications over wire
protocols?

Only when the connection is slow enough to impair responsiveness.
The fact that one can run graphical applications over a network
connection is, in my opinion, one of the strengths of X11.

Then again, I just tried simply su'ing to root in a terminal-emulator
window and starting a graphical program, and that worked too, though
I seem to remember it *not* working in the past. Huh.

Eh?

Not sure what you mean here. "su" is a command that starts
a subshell as a different user; executed as a regular user, it
prompts for a password. I can't speak for others, but this is how
I normally do work requiring superuser privileges: In a terminal
window, I issue the command "su" and respond to the prompt for
the root password. I then have a shell running as root, into
which I can type whatever commands I wanted to execute as root.
When I'm done, "exit" exits the shell-running-as-root.

A risk here is that the terminal-emulator window with the
root session might not be easy to distinguish from other
terminal-emulator windows -- the shell prompts would probably be
different, but that might be easy to not spot.

Interesting how modal information being subtle enough to be easy to
not spot suddenly becomes a concern of yours when security is at
issue,

Actually, no; I put in this discussion of how to make the clues
more obvious solely in an attempt to head off objections I thought
you might make. In practice I can't remember it ever seeming like
a problem I needed to solve; there are usually enough clues that
I don't find myself confused.

even when it isn't when novice user friendliness is all that's
at issue and the worst that can happen is that some n00b accidentally
repartitions her hard drive when she meant to launch the music player
app to listen to Britney screech for an hour. :P

[ snip ]

Some of the "nice graphical tools" for sysadmin-type tasks now
prompt for the root password when run by a regular user.

Instead of just not working -- yeah, that makes sense. I wonder how
well they protected it from privilege escalation, though. I can
imagine a few issues:

[ snip ]

I don't know enough about security issues to comment in any detail.
I'm sure there are possible risks associated with any mechanism
for letting unprivileged users temporarily gain more rights by
simply supplying an appropriate password. It seems to me that
not providing such a mechanism makes it more likely that most
people will simply run as administrator all the time, and that
this also has its risks. Cue banal remark about tradeoffs.

[ snip ]

--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.
.

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