[sf-lug] GKsu has long been EOLed

[Akkana Peck]

Rick Moen writes:
> Quoting Akkana Peck (akkana at shallowsky.com):
> 
> > On the other hand, I don't need a graphical sudo (I don't think I
> > even have one installed). Typing "sudo gparted /dev/sdb" in a
> > terminal works fine for me. 
> 
> Such work _on_ a RPi would be a rare case of a rescue/maintenance live
> distro not being the right choice, for the simple reason of there 
> _not being_, to my knowledge, any such distros for RPi.
> 
> That being said, if I had that problem, I'd keep a spare SD card set up
> with a carefully sparse X11 setup and maintenance and with root login
> enabled (no must-use-sudo bullshit), and keep it in a drawer and marked
> as 'RPi Rescue Image' for just such occasions.

Why? It's just an SD card -- pull it out of the Pi, plug it into my
normal Linux machine and then do whatever operations I need. It's
just like buying a new flash drive or external disk: I don't use a
rescue distro to write to those either, and I'm not sure what the
advantage would be.

> If I didn't have one handy, personally I'd do:
> 
> $ ssh -Y root at localhost
> # gparted /dev/sdb &
> 
> (Assumes a local sshd -- and I am not a member of the must-use-sudo
> church.)

I have a local sshd, but that gives Permission denied even after I
type root's password. I guess I'd have to enable ssh-as-root, at
least for localhost?

I'm not clear why this would be better than running sudo locally,
or su-ing before running the command. It's going to be running as
root on the local machine either way.

> FWIW, I read recently that running graphical applications with root
> authority using sudo is disrecommended.  It
> was said in a number of places, citing something about various files
> ending up getting wrong permissions/ownership, but I didn't pay much
> attention because of not being a church-of-sudo parishioner.
> Supposedly, that's part of the rationale for using GKsu and kin,
> instead.

I did a little cursory googling but couldn't find anything useful.

> For example (on the latter point), when I worked at Cadence Design
> Systems, we were supposed to use a time-tracking application that
> existed only for MS-Windows and Solaris.  So, I just did 'ssh -Y' 
> to a Solaris host on the LAN, and ran it there with X displaying via the
> ssh tunnel onto my Debian laptop.

I run X clients from the Raspberry Pi with ssh -X now and then (I'm
running one now to try to talk to my weather station). I hadn't
known about -Y, and that looks like it's probably a better option,
so I'll use that instead. I've never used either one as root, though.

        ...Akkana