Sean Middleditch wrote:
On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 17:39 +0100, Manuel Moreno wrote:
On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 20:32 -0400, seth vidal wrote:
...Disable root graphical logins.
Period.
-sv
Don't do it, for God's sake!
Let's not forget that computers are to be useful *not* to be secure.
Fortunately, the computer is 100% useful without having root graphical logins. Anyone who thinks otherwise is failing to think of the actual problem (I need to do task X) and is instead only thinking of an old solution (just login as root). Everything you can possibly do by logging in as root at GDM can be done some other way, in both a more secure *and* a more convenient manner.
-- Manuel Moreno <manolo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Actually, for my work, I use the graphical root login for one thing:
Setting up a freshly installed machine... I know that this can be done from an user account, but I often have a lot of things that needs to be configured as root (both with graphical and shell tools). The shell tools isn't a problem, as a simple su - can accomplish this, but the graphical setup tools is a different story. When using a graphical (root-required) tool, you can run several (root) tools shortly after each other. But after some time, you will loose the privileges again. And then you need to use the root password yet again. This is anoying if it happens too many times a day.
So I find the graphical root login usefull when setting up a fresh machine.
Another issue is, that a system, at install time, can be configured without any users at all. This is for instance the case if you configure network authentication. If this setup for some reason doesn't work, and root cannot log in (graphically), the user is left with a system he cannot login to. Surely he can use a graphical console, but often a graphical login will be more usefull, since it can be easier to fix thing. Anyway, you are able to have a webbrowser and a console on the same screen, which I have found to be very usefull :)
However, I'm voting in favor off a warning message at log in, and possibly some doomsday looking desktop.
Regards /kbn
