consolehelper issues

Nalin Dahyabhai nalin at redhat.com
Mon Feb 9 23:34:11 UTC 2004


On Mon, Feb 09, 2004 at 06:19:22PM -0500, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> As user 'bob' I can run /usr/BIN/redhat-config-network (btw, shouldn't
> this be fedora-config-network) and nothing happens (i.e. no su'ish
> prompt).  If I 'strace /usr/BIN/redhat-config-network' it magically
> works... that is the user is prompted for root's password.

Has 'bob' previously run an application which is run via consolehelper
and userhelper?  If so, then the fact that 'bob' knows root's password
is probably being cached, and it's a matter of timing and not whether or
not it's being straced that's causing the change in behavior.

As an aside, in the development tree the prefix is frequently 'system'
instead of 'fedora' or 'redhat'.  For more information, check the
fedora-config-list archives for November 2003.

> redhat-config-network works fine as root, AND
> /usr/SBIN/redhat-config-network works FINE as user 'bob' with NO
> authentication.  User 'bob' is only a member of group 'users'.

Some configuration tools can be run as non-privileged users (and if the
unprivileged user can read the configuration, it'll even be displayed
properly), but you should run into problems if you try to modify the
configuration due to filesystem permissions set on files which the tool
will try to modify.

HTH,

Nalin





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