Suse 8.2 won't remember root password as reg. user
I am a long time Red Hat user, relatively new SuSE user.
I have always stayed logged in as root on my personal Linux boxen and felt guilty that I wasn't doing what I tell my customers to do ... log in as a USER, and only use root when you need it. SuSE 8.2 changed all of that by giving me a less than complete set of menus for the root install, thus *encouraging* me to log in as myself. The POINT of this post is that when I run Yast2, or YOU, or any other privileged application, I enter the root password in the dialog box and I check the box that says "Remember this password" .... it doesn't. I stiill have to type the stupid password EVERY time. Any ideas, thoughts, sympathetic grunts? |
Why do you want to do that?
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he wants to do that so that he doesn't have to write the complex root password everytime he needs to run apps that require root priviledge. i am sharing the grunt with you obarney, if suse cannot remember the password then why 'Keep Password' option ? even in suse 8.0 it was ok.
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Exactly. I went to all of this trouble to make a hard to crack / impossible to guess password and now I have to type it 100 times a day because much of what I do requires root.
I am thinking of just going back to doing everything as root. This switching back and forth is annoying. I'm the only one on the machine. The only real threat that I can see from doing everything as root is that if I install some service and it gets compromised, the attacker is in as root. Anyone else have any good (actual) reasons for me to NOT go back? |
you would have to modify roots account to be that of an extra-ordinary user. ie paths, menus...
you have to ./ everytime you want to run a command in a given dir. you might seriously damage your system doing something whimsical. you will run the (remote) risk of damage via a UNIX trojan. |
My idea...
Run an xterm somewhere on your desktop, su to root, and then start all of your root-requiring apps from there. |
Right, having an open root xterm for kickstarting specific tasks is the way I do it now. What is annoying is when I find and try to run some little nugget on a GUI menu and I get ... nothing. Then I go looking around for the log file and find out that it will only run as root. Sure, I can get around it, but it is annoying. (Or I forget I'm not root and I try to "find / -name somefile" only to get tons of errors.)
Obviously, we don't usually have an idea of the experience level of a person asking a question on a forum like this. As a UNIX admin for about ten years on several brands of UNIX/Linux I am aware that doing "whimsical things" (I like that phrase) as root can be dangerous. We've all heard the "I didn't KNOW I was in / when I ran that rm command!" stories. I guess I was looking for specific threats I'd be opening myself to if I log on as root all the time, as opposed to the general risk. Thanks for the suggestions though. |
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