[Mageia-discuss] A possible risk ?

[Diego Bello]

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 11:01 AM, Wolfgang Bornath
<molch.b at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2012/2/8 Anne Wilson <annew at kde.org>:
>> On Wednesday 08 February 2012 15:13:57 Anne Wilson wrote:
>>> Yes, I have seen postings like "why do I have to use passwords" and
>>> "why can I not log in KDE as root" more than once. Are these people
>>> our target group? If so than - have fun! What strikes me is that you
>>> of all people are advocating a loosening of security with no real
>>> reason.
>>
>> I do not want to have to give the root password to members of my family that
>> are, frankly, clueless on tech-matters.  At the same time, I do want them to
>> apply at least security updates.  Being able to accept updates from a trusted
>> source (direct from Mageia) with only their user password is the safest their
>> systems can have.
>
> I understand the reasons. But you know as well as everybody else that
> sometimes updates do not work as easy as they should. It could be
> caused by a faulty mirror or by a glitch in a package (which should
> not happen but "should not happen" implies "can happen") or whatever
> other reason. Then your family members will wait for you anyway (in
> the best case) without knowing what happened - while they could have
> been happily working or entertaining themselves until you come and do
> the updates.
>
> Apart from the understandable quest to make it easy on the unwashed
> masses - it is still a security break - see what I have written about
> the ability of xguest to do updates (while xguest was invented to
> leave the system without garbage or damage at the end of his/her
> session).
>
> --
> wobo

A bad update will break your system no matter if you are root or not.
I think normal users should be able to install updates unless you say
so in the MCC, but I agree that the xguest user should not be able to
do so. That, imho, is a bug and should be solved.

-- 
Diego Bello Carreño