kdesu default super-user-command

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

On Thursday 22 November 2007, Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On Thursday 22 November 2007, Thomas Friedrichsmeier wrote:
> > I'd like to apply the attached patch (kdelibs/kdesu/). This reverts the
> > default super user command in kdesu back to "su" from "sudo", and adds a
> > cmake switch to change the default to "sudo".
>
> Why does that need to be done at compile time ?
> Wouldn't reading that from a config file be good enough ?

There is a - well-hidden - runtime configuration option for this. The 
compile time option is sort of the default-default (also that which used 
effective, if the runtime configured default is not supported). I suppose it's 
useful for distributions to set a global default, easily (there was a similar 
switch in KDE3).

Note that only su and sudo are supported, any other value will be ignored.

On su vs. sudo: Note that kdesu - in it's current implementation - pretty much 
defies the entire logic behind sudo (except for that you don't need the root 
but your own password). That's because internally the command that is run is 
always "kdesu_stub", which then calls the real command. So, with kdesu it's 
the same all or nothing you get with su, modulo the password needed to access 
it.

(But that's the problem with sudo, anyway, in practice, no? Defining what 
exactly a user may do with admin-priviledges. May work ok for 
starting/stopping some daemons, but what if you want to install something?)

Regards
Thomas

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