On Fri, 2012-03-02 at 08:42 -0600, Greg Swift wrote:
On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 05:36, Nikos Roussos
<nikos(a)autoverse.net>
wrote:
Here is a weird example of how Fedora currenty handles some
permission procedures. I created a standard user account (no
admin rights) and I'm trying to install a package. When I
press apply I'm prompted to enter a password. Since I have no
admin rights I would expect to be asked for the root password.
Instead of that I'm asked to enter a password of another user
who happens to be in the administrative group!
See the screenshot as a proof:
http://s.autoverse.net/yYi6AF
See on the top right corner that I'm logged in with another
account.
So in the UX level we have actually disabled the root account
(I can remember when was the last time I was prompted to enter
it) thus we keep asking for a root password during
installation that's ends up confusing people about its
purpose.
PS. an interesting question: if I had two users on my system
belonging to the administrative group. which one's password
I'll be prompted to enter when I'm logged with a standard user
account, like the example above.
I experience a similar scenario. On my home system (f16) I have my
wife and both in the wheel group. Every time I go to run virt-manager
I get prompted for her password. I do believe she is first in the
wheel group after root in /etc/group. However this doesn't make any
sense to me. It makes more sense for users that need that level of
access to all know the root password rather than the users to know
another user's password. Even then, if I am in the same group,
doesn't it make more since to either prompt for my own password or
just allow me? We know each others password so i've always shrugged
it off cause I'm looking at other issues the few times when I am
playing with the virtuals at home but since someone brought it up...
This sounds pretty straightforwardly like a bug probably in PolicyKit,
to me. It's obviously more correct to use the current user's
authorization if it's sufficient than just to go with the first user in
the admin group in all cases...
So, file a bug against PolicyKit.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net