The "lock screen" operation in FC5 does not actually lock the screen when the user is logged in as root. I'm curious about why this is not considered a serious bug. When I log in as root, the Screensaver Preferences applet shows the "lock screen when screensaver active" box checked. It informs root that the screen will lock when in fact, it won't. I've found the following: On the fedora-list, Aaron Konstam noted that locking the screen as root is something you don't want to do, because you should not log in as root. On the gnome-list, a posting noted that one can bypass the screensaver anyway with CTRL-ALT-F1, so logging in as root is dangerous. But I tried this, and while I can bypass the screensaver, I still must log in to my virtual terminals. So no loss of security. And it still begs the question of -- given how dangerous a root login is -- how preventing screen locking helps this situation. Also on the gnome-list, a brief reply says that executing xhost +localhost will allow root to lock the screen. But this doesn't work on my FC5 laptop. And there's nothing on the GNOME user's wiki about the reasons why root cannot lock the screen. I think this is a defect (at best a nasty side-effect), and I'd welcome a good explanation why preventing screen lock for root is desirable behavior. If there's a good reason, then the Screensaver Preferences applet should uncheck and gray out this option for root. As it stands, the applet conveys that the screen will lock for root, when it simply won't. The GUI lies to the superuser about how the system will respond. That's a little scary. If anyone has wisdom about this, I would be grateful. Others have asked me, and I'd like a better answer than, "it's a dangerous bug in GNOME". Thanks! Erik -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
