On Fri, 26 Oct 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > 'cause you're not supposed to login as root. You're not supposed to
> > run a window manager or a desktop or any of that stuff. See 'man su'
> > and 'man sudo' for better alternatives.
>
> So who was the idiot genius that thought that one up. Normally I do
> login as my user and su when I need to do root stuff. BUT, I still find
> it usefull to log into root under a GUI every now and then. I don't
> think it should be upto Gnome to not allow me this. Guy's get a
> clue...get a consensus before you add something that affects everyone!
According to Gnome Doctrine for quite some time: (I'm -not- quoting, I'm
paraphrasing and guessing - it's been ~6 months since I last read it :)
Due to some known and unfixable security holes in gnome, it is
inadviseable to login as root with a gnome application at any time. This
problem is also present with other software incidentally. (actually if I
remember correctly the security holes are in libX11 not in gnome)
This isn't a debian issue - it's a gnome one. And as far as I can tell,
they made the right one. Apparently these holes are low/no risk for
regular users but I'm not sure...
Hope that clarifies :)
G'day, eh? :)
- Teunis Peters
