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LewRockwell
September 1st, 2009, 05:34 PM
Comparison_of_privilege_authorization_features

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gksudo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_(Unix)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_privilege_authorization_features


one should understand the differences between these...


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Paddy Landau
September 1st, 2009, 05:44 PM
Thanks for that.

I understand that it is always safe to use gksudo, even with a command line, whereas sudo and gksu are not always safe (e.g. if running Firefox as root).

LewRockwell
September 1st, 2009, 06:08 PM
gksudo...super-user-do

current user(whoami) must be on super-user list


gksu...substitute-user(perhaps "super-user" on some systems)

current user is substituted with user specified during "su" call

if no substitute is specificied AND current user is on super-user list then perhaps this successfully changes privileges

still, better to actually call specifically what you intend

hence, the original discussions regarding "sudo" and "gksudo"

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sisco311
September 1st, 2009, 06:29 PM
In Ubuntu, gksudo is a symbolic link to gksu:

ls -al /usr/bin/gksudo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 2009-07-21 10:36 /usr/bin/gksudo -> gksu


The default authentication mode is sudo, but one should be able to change it to su by running gksu-properties.

Paddy Landau
September 3rd, 2009, 05:02 PM
In Ubuntu, gksudo is a symbolic link to gksu...
The default authentication mode is sudo, but one should be able to change it to su by running gksu-properties.
Thank you, two new things that I've learned!