Hi everyone, I know this topic has been asked a lot of times. But after reading all the threads, I could not find the answer that I am looking for so I'm asking it on this thread instead.

First, I am new to linux I just finished installing Fedora 14 on a different PC which I will be using solely to explore Linux. However the first annoying problem I encountered was that I can't do a lot of things without Linux asking me for the root password. This has become really annoying, I want to stop fedora from asking for root authentication every time I want to explore something here and there.

Among the work-arounds that I've tried and didn't quite work for me are:
1. login as root on the kdm - I can login as root but because I am also encouraging my sister to explore fedora 14 she needs the same access as root too. We have our own preferences so we both need individual accounts that have same access level as root.

2. change userid to 0 (same as root) and modify groups to be exactly the same as root's groups - very bad solution, what it did was make my user a sort of "alias" for the root. It basically uses the same /root/ folder, same settings and all that stuff. Again, my sister and I need separate accounts for a more personal feel.

3. use terminal and go sudo, sudoers, etc - very bad idea, I want to explore using the kde gui. And again I want to eliminate the inconvenience of having to type things over and over again. I'd rather type the password over and over again than having to use terminal and sudo everything.

4. beesu, gksu - anyone knows how to make linux automatically wrap everything with beesu/gksu?


since we are just exploring, we are willing to trade the systems, integrity and security for the convenience of having freedom to explore everything in it. I don't care, it could blow up the pc for all I care (it's old and for experiment anyway).

This exploring linux of ours is a make or break for us to using linux. If there is no solution to this problem, we'll probably scrap the whole "migrate to linux" idea.

I thinking of making Linux recognize our user id the same way it recognizes uid 0 but I have no idea how to do this.

The inherent security of the GNU/Linux operating system is based on the fact that the administrative levels of access are kept separate from the user levels. There should really be very little need for a user to require root access for most of his/her needs. Logging in to your operating system as root defeats the purpose of separation of access. You may as well be running MS Windows and have your arse flying out in the breeze. GNU/Linux, and especially a security-minded distribution like Fedora Core, is set up specifically with security in mind. Keep in mind that Linux got its start from Unix, an operating system that was designed to host numerous users.

It's your computer and operating system, so you can do as you please. However, I would not recommend defeating this inherent security of the operating system. That is my opinion.

Regards,

~Eric

2 members found this post helpful.

I agree with vtel57.

Nevertheless if I wanted to easily do what is in the original post I would log on as a normal user, open a terminal window, allow X connections from other users, log in as root, and run X applications like Nautilus.

It sounds like the root account is already fully functional. If it was not already so then it could be made fully functional with this one time procedure.

Open a terminal window and enter the following commands.
Once that is done you can simply use su - to gain root access in a terminal window.

I use several user accounts concurrently so I have the following line in my $HOME/.bashrc or $HOME/bash_profile, depending on distribution.
Now I can open a terminal window and use su - to log on as any other user, including root. Then I can start any X application and it will display on my screen.

Some distributions will require that the second user execute the following command either interactively or in their $HOME/.bashrc or $HOME/.bash_profile, depending on distribution.

Windows now asks you for permission to do things every time - they figured that out after about 15 years !

Why should we help you turn linux into windows 95 ?

Listen to the experts.

Well that's probably best then, for all of us.You work with the system or you don't. Please don't presume to threaten the people who use it with no problem, despite your insignificant issues. Maybe you haven't noticed but linux makes NO money from being popular, so your thinly veiled threat means nothing. You are either here because you want to be, or you're not. If it's the latter, then it's your loss.

1 members found this post helpful.

It all has to do with context. It wasn't that Windows 95/98/NT/XP were inherently insecure it was that it was so easy to run processes as the logged in user (without the logged in user knowing about it) and obviously if that user has administrator rights then so do all processes spawned by him.

Even today with Windows UAC controls, its still relatively simple to bypass the control via the Win32 API that having windows ask you for permission to do everything is really just to aid in user awareness not to really secure the system.

You absolutely do not want to login interactively with root permission because any processes you spawn will inherit root access and that's a risk no one should be willing to take.