[Mageia-discuss] A possible risk ?

[Wolfgang Bornath]

2012/2/8 Diego Bello <dbello at gmail.com>:
> 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.

That's actually a point in favor of the need for the root password -
if the system breaks: the user can not do anything at all - instead he
will have to go for a walk until root comes to fix the problem. So why
do you insist on letting poor user take that risk by default?

-- 
wobo