sudo-like login with policykit

Matthias Clasen mclasen at redhat.com
Sat Apr 26 18:41:05 UTC 2008


On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 16:25 -0400, Casey Dahlin wrote:
> I like using the sudo style logins on my box, where it asks for my 
> password instead of root's. That may not be anyone else's thing, that's 
> OK. This is not a thread about changing the default.
> 
> But about changing it for me personally...
> 
> In F8 I was able to do this by mass-editing a whole bunch of console-kit 
> config files and adding myself to wheel. PolicyKit is supposed to make 
> this easier now, but I haven't figured out how to do it.
> 
> My question is: should we provide a mechanism to make switching to 
> personal authentication easy (or easier at any rate)? We don't have to 
> change the default, but empowering the user is a good thing. I would add 
> that the ability to remove the root password from the same tool might 
> also be helpful (none of my boxes have any root password whatsoever).

In F9, what you can do is use polkit-gnome-authorization to change what
PolicyKit asks you for for individual actions. The tool lets you change
the implicit authorizations that are use for all users (e.g. to only
require Authentication instead of Admin Authentication), and it also
lets you grant explicit authorizations for individual users.

polkit-gnome-authorization is in the menus at System > Preferences >
System > Authorizations.

For F10 and beyond, we probably want to look at a) integrating this in a
user-management tool that would replace s-c-users and lets you easily
set up authorizations for new users (maybe just pick prefefined 'roles'
like administrator, regular user or guest). And b) a reworked about me
capplet should offer a simplified view of my own privileges.


Matthias





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