Bug 136921

Summary:	FreeCiv refuses to run as root, displaying no error message when run from the menu
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Daniel Reed <djr>
Component:	freeciv	Assignee:	Daniel Reed <djr>
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	rawhide	CC:	laroche, nobody+bclark, snickell
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i686
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2004-10-26 17:47:15 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:	55219
Bug Blocks:

Description Daniel Reed 2004-10-23 05:09:08 UTC

Description of problem:

Both FreeCiv's server and client refuse to run as root, displaying no error
message when run from the menu. (An error message is displayed only when run
from a terminal.)

FreeCiv should either be modified to run as root (which was allowed in the
past), or it should be removed from the menus for the root user's desktop.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
freeciv-1.14.2-1

Comment 1 Karsten Hopp 2004-10-23 13:35:09 UTC

>Both FreeCiv's server and client refuse to run as root 
 
That's a feature, not a bug.  
 
>FreeCiv should either be modified to run as root 
 
No way. If upstream changes this, ok. But I'm not going to spend any 
time on this. 
 
The right fix for this would be to disallow root running an X desktop 
alltogether. This would prevent users from doing their day-to-day 
work as the superuser and screw their system up. Or even worse, 
compromise their system and their companies infrastructure by hitting 
browser or mail exploits.

Comment 2 Daniel Reed 2004-10-23 14:10:20 UTC

If gdm should not allow root to login and "startx" should refuse to run as root,
please file one or more bugs to that effect and mark this bug (136921) as
blocking on your new one or ones.

Otherwise, if FreeCiv can not be made to work correctly while logged in as the
root user, it should be removed from the menus for the root user's desktop.

Please do not re-close this until the misbehavior is no longer present. Thanks.

Comment 3 Karsten Hopp 2004-10-23 14:22:39 UTC

We don't have per-user menus, there's no way to remove a menu entry 
just for root. File a bug against redhat-menues if you'd like to have  
another opinion about running an X desktop as root. 
 
Assign this to the X or the GDM maintainer, but don't waste my time 
with this. reopening just results in one more bugzilla on my ignore 
list.

Comment 4 Daniel Reed 2004-10-23 19:09:44 UTC

Please do not re-close this until the misbehavior is no longer present. Thanks.

Comment 6 Seth Nickell 2004-10-25 16:46:01 UTC

Silent failure is terrible for usability. There should be a message
telling the user it won't run as root.

Disallowing root login is not really an option unless we were able to
add sudo-like hooks to the desktop (file manager, text editor, etc).
In the mid to long term we cannot require people (administrators
included) to use shell.

Comment 7 Daniel Reed 2004-10-25 20:36:23 UTC

This is apparently a regression; bug 28928 mentions similar problems and, while
I'm looking at its fix still being applied in our .spec, it seems the fix used
for 28928 no longer works. I have no idea why the patch was never upstreamed.

Comment 8 Daniel Reed 2004-10-26 17:47:15 UTC

Fix for FC4. I changed the wrapper to try harder to run as user nobody, and
added checks to detect failure and report an error to the user. UI signed off by
snickell.