Description of problem: In large Linux installations you often have a need for more than one person doing administrative tasks. These admins should typically not all have access to the root password, as this makes it hard to log who made the changes or the helping admins shouldn't have full root priviledges. So they use sudo. Unfortunately the Gnome "System->Administraion->..." tools all ask for rhe root password to be run. They should support sudo. Ubuntu allready does this, perhaps you could borrow some code from them. Changeing this behavior would make Fedora much more "Enterprise ready" Related bug in the gnome bugzilla is 309672 Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Gnome 2.x
(confirmed.) This is important to many workstations at companies and universities. Most of the times people are not given the root password; instead they are just sudo'ed. To open up a GUI as root (say, gedit /etc/foo), one should do: > xhost +root (or even worse, xhost +) > sudo gedit ... > (...wait until the window opens up) > xhost - (probably there is an easier way, but still, it's far more difficult than the default behaviour of consolehelper that Uno Engborg described). Fedora, *in addition* to consolehelper, should support administrative tasks using the sudo environment. Both in the menus and for commands. Commands should support something like gtksu (never tried it, since it is not included in Extras!). Users should have the option to choose the portable consolehelper *or* the applicable sudo-way.
From a message I posted on the FE list: Put the user in the group "wheel". Put "UGROUPS=wheel" in the corresponding consolehelper config file. Presto -- sudo-like behavior. (Any group can be used; doesn't have to be wheel -- that's just traditional for this sort of thing.) (But the policykit approach is the best for the future -- running GUI apps as root is just asking for trouble.)
the UGROUPS=groupname does work (really nice), however the issue is I have to set it for EVERY single service as I saw no global config file that could set the default for ALL services.
In the future, some sort of dbus-based system will do this in a more secure way, with administrative tasks accomplished without ever having to run GUI code as root. Because of that, it's unlikely that much more development work will be invested here. In the meantime, if you want to enble this for all programs, you could do something like: for f in $( find /etc/security/console.apps/ -type f ); do echo "UGROUPS=groupname" >> $f done
Fedora Core 5 and Fedora Core 6 are, as we're sure you've noticed, no longer test releases. We're cleaning up the bug database and making sure important bug reports filed against these test releases don't get lost. It would be helpful if you could test this issue with a released version of Fedora or with the latest development / test release. Thanks for your help and for your patience. [This is a bulk message for all open FC5/FC6 test release bugs. I'm adding myself to the CC list for each bug, so I'll see any comments you make after this and do my best to make sure every issue gets proper attention.]
This is still a problem in the latest fedora version
Thanks to all of you that have provided work arounds. The problem is that they are too complex for most people to handle. This probably needs to be handled in a GUI.
Changing the subject to be more generic -- sudo isn't the only way of doing this. (See my previous comments.)
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