Root User

[tester2007]

I know that there have been some changes between Fedora 9 and 10 as far as root user is concern. I haven't try F11 yet so I cannot say. When you search the web you can see that a lot of people are trying to find out how to use the root user under F10. Even of you manage to login, some applications will not work warning you that you have "too much" privileges. Many experts say: "you not supposed to", "you shouldn't do that", "it's not good for you". Nobody ever say why? Maybe experts really don't know why and they just repeat the things that they hear. Is Fedora crowd among them?

I know a lot of things is bad for you. Some people shouldn't smoke, some shouldn't drink. But I wouldn't like if someone infringe these rights on me like during prohibition. I want to have freedom to decide what is good for me.

I WANT TO BE ABLE TO USE ROOT USER WHEN I WANT TO. These are the rights of superuser as long as UNIX/LINUX was invented. I don't want Fedora or Gnome or anybody else tell me what is good for me and force into their way. If we had a LINUX constitution, that would be unconstitutional.

Please, note that I am not forcing anyone else to logging as root. I am simply defending the rights that were there for years since Red Hat started.

[CSchwangler]

Why are you complaining? There are documented steps to work around it

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Enabling_Root_User_For_GNOME_Display_Manager

Fedora places a special focus on security, which I think is a good idea, and thats why root login is disabled.

[tester2007]

I am complaining about the changes that I don't like! I am defending rights to use root user. I want "root" to be a superuser as is intend to. So, root should be able to run anything without a question.

Even when you login as root after changes to "/etc/pam.d/gdm" some applications will not run.
For example, "Add/Remove Software" will not run.

In previous versions, you could enable 'root user' through user manager. 'Root' would then appear on the login menu. All applications would run OK.

[CSchwangler]

I probably should have asked my question in a different way:

Why are you complaining in this forum?

We are normal users and you should ask the developers why they don't want root to access the desktop. And if certain applications are not working if you are logged in as root, it would probably best to file a bug report, wouldn't it?

[tester2007]

I apologize if this is not right forum. I am speaking out (which I do very rarely) because I think this is not a bug. For example, the application would start, warn you about to much privileges and exit. This is a part of new feature of Fedora. It hasn't been like this before.

I am an UNIX/LINUX user since 1984 and I have never got in trouble because I was using root user. But there is this tendency to marginalize the use of superuser. For example, if I am a superuser, a "king of the castle", I should be able to do absolutely anything I want to. Nobody should put any special code to check for root in "pam.d/gdm" or any other place. To me such doing defeats the purpose of superuser.

[giany]

Why don`t you make your own Linux distro with root that can do whatever he wants in X? My opinion is that this thing is a good thing..you need root then open a terminal and su - . Its easy.

[tester2007]

To: giany.

You could have told me " love it or leave it". But then what is the purpose of a forum? Either I have a problem to get my point across or you missing the point (I know very well how to use sudo and su).

We all know that from command shell I can use root. My point is that we should not minimize any superuser rights in the GUI as well.

[robert-e]

I ran into this sort of thing yesterday. The "network printing" on my wife's laptop went "up-*****" last week, and I went to fix it last night. I first tried to use the CUPS administration utility, both in Firefox and in Konqueror, and it would not let me manage (or even delete) existing printers. I then tried to use the KDE printer setup utility; it failed; want the root password, and when supplied, it did not accept it, claiming wrong password. So that method was out. I tried in a "su -" root terminal, and attempted both the previous methods...no joy either.
I finally logged out, and logged back in as root..accepted root password okay, and then found I could use either CUPS or the KDE printer utility to manage/delete/setup printers. Oh yes...I also had a look at the printer conf file, but unlike those produced in Gnome, it was not something I would want to tinker with using the CLI.

Bottom line for me: If I was not able to log in as root to fix that printing problem, I would have been asked to re-install XP. I would not have liked to do that, but I would have. To do otherwise would have brought consequences that I don't want to think about.

Now I understand that if I knew more about Linux/Fedora I could have likely fixed whatever needed without a root GUI, but I am not there yet. Here is the main point: I WOULD SOONER REINSTALL (FEDORA) IF I SCREW UP USING ROOT GUI, RATHER THAN RE-INSTALL WINDOWS. (capital letters for emphasis)

Regards,
Bob

[sonoran]

Many experts say: "you not supposed to", "you shouldn't do that", "it's not good for you". Nobody ever say why? Maybe experts really don't know why and they just repeat the things that they hear. Is Fedora crowd among them?

No, we are real experts here.:D

This link explains why GTK+ (gui) programs should not be run with root privileges:
http://www.gtk.org/setuid.html

And this is from the "GNOME Programming Guidelines" by Federico Mena Quintero:
"Under no circumstance create a GTK+ program that is setuid root. The GTK+ and
GNOME libraries are big and complex, and they have not been audited for secu-
rity."

[JN4OldSchool]

Quit whining and just switch distros. That is the only way to make a real statement.

[robert-e]

Sean,

Quit whining and just switch distros. That is the only way to make a real statement.

Heh..The only distro that "she" would let me switch her to is Windows XP. Not going there if I can help it.

On another note: "whining"???: you sure have been "stirring the pot" the last few day. :D

Best regards,
Bob

[JN4OldSchool]

Sean,



Heh..The only distro that "she" would let me switch her to is Windows XP. Not going there if I can help it.

On another note: "whining"???: you sure have been "stirring the pot" the last few day. :D

Best regards,
Bob

Hey Bob,

That was directed at the OP, not at you. You have enough sense to know this already and you have used other distros. We both know that Fedora just is what it is and no one here is going to change that. I feel for the OP, I really do. While I agree with the not running as root part I also feel that Fedora has no business preventing this in the first place. But, my opinion is neither here nor there. It is a free product that you use with no guarantees regarding quality or satisfaction. The answer for the OP is simple; go elsewhere. I did. I found Arch and love it. It is current, transparent, does not coddle the user...it is what Linux is SUPPOSED to be. And I can log in as root if I darn well please.

As a footnote, I have been playing with F11 and find it a great release. I could happily use it full time. I wont though because I have found something I feel is better.

Stirring the pot? Nah, I am just grumpy because I am looking at around 5 chapters of reading, a 20 question quiz and a 5 page three source research paper all due by Sunday midnight and I am procrastinating on it. :)

[stefan1975]

*sigh* another root user thread? could we not just sticky one of the previous kazillion ones?

[robert-e]

Yeah Stefan,
I think the "root user" thing is not going to go away any time soon. Too many old-timers, and old newbies like me are just crusty enough to voice their annoyance. Yet, as in politics; if you don't complain, they think you like what they are doing. So perhaps in that sense, these threads are a good thing.
I suppose that just like in politics: if you don't like what OP post, no one is making you read them; and certainly, no is making you post replies.
That is the great thing about fedoraforums: the devs don't listen??, so what we post does not harm anyone. Of course, one should always be polite; rudeness is universally distasteful.

Regards,
Bob

[JN4OldSchool]

Well, in that case the fact that you cannot log in as root by default sucks eggs!!! It is stupid. It does not matter that you can "put it back" it should never have been taken away!!! x zapping should be enabled also. A few distros are overriding the brilliance of the xorg devs and reseting this to be default. The sad part of this one is the time you need this to be enabled it is too late to do anything, you have to do a cold restart. Instead it makes more sense that the few...what is it, emacs?...ham handed emacs users disable this. Same for LVM!!! What, in the name of everything Linux, is the logic behind THIS default? LVM is great, it is an awesome technology. Fedora should contain it. Just not as a default. We are home desktop users, most of us have single drive laptops now. Fedora is NOT RHEL!!!

How's that Bob? I can rant on but most of the rest is just personal stuff. But I think my above complaints pretty much nail user consensus. It sure feels good to vent, but I dont think it will get us anywhere. The Fedora guys have their own ideas about what they want Fedora to be...and I dont think that, in the end, that is necessarily a bad thing. Like I said in previous posts, there are many distros available. There is nothing that special about Fedora, it is just Linux.

[stefan1975]

i'm okay with either position in this discussion, it is just that the same arguments are being made over and over in these threads, i was merely suggesting that one of the better ones was to be stickied so people didn't have to write down the same stuff over and over again, it being a hot item as you state.

like this one recently for example: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=223310

on topic, i don't know what the fuss is all about. logging in as root isn't turned off in fedora 9+, the devs just changed the default. I am in the camp that agrees that one shouldn't log in as root but i also think one should be able to do with linux whatever they desire. freedom for all. but people all make it sound as if the entire root thingy was removed from fedora (like in ubuntu), which it isn't.....they just changed the default from "on" to "off". I'd say that people who know they actually *want* to log in as root are smart enough to change the config file allowing to them to do so again, it is not *that* big a deal.

[JN4OldSchool]

i'm okay with either position in this discussion, it is just that the same arguments are being made over and over in these threads, i was merely suggesting that one of the better ones was to be stickied so people didn't have to write down the same stuff over and over again, it being a hot item as you state.

like this one recently for example: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=223310

on topic, i don't know what the fuss is all about. logging in as root isn't turned off in fedora 9+, the devs just changed the default. I am in the camp that agrees that one shouldn't log in as root but i also think one should be able to do with linux whatever they desire. freedom for all. but people all make it sound as if the entire root thingy was removed from fedora (like in ubuntu), which it isn't.....they just changed the default from "on" to "off". I'd say that people who know they actually *want* to log in as root are smart enough to change the config file allowing to them to do so again, it is not *that* big a deal.

Ubuntu is not a good comparison. No one turned anything "off" in Ubuntu, it just doesnt ask the user to create a root account. Creating one is as simple as assigning a root password you dont have to edit anything. I guess Fedora couldnt do this because it still uses su and not sudo.

[stefan1975]

I guess Fedora couldnt do this because it still uses su and not sudo.

well i think it is blasphemy to follow ubuntu in the sudo area but i am pretty sure i saw a thread on the dev list the other day where the devs were making an argument to switch to sudo by default as well instead of su -c, so we might be going down the same road after all with nothing but blue seperating us.

[tester2007]

I agree with robert-e (Bob). I felt that I needed to complain so they (OP) don't think I like what they are doing. And yes, there is always another distro but I used Fedora (Red Hat) since very beginning. It's hard to part.

[JN4OldSchool]

Did you hear of the new Mint policy? It seems the way Ubuntu works is it now enables root but it assigns it a random password generated at every boot. (I am not 100% on this, this is my understanding). So in Mint they have instead assigned root the user password!!! :eek: I never really did get a clear answer to why this was done, some nonsense that Clem dreamed up, you can read his answer in the thread I started here:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=26885

The gist of it is that now, as a default in Mint, you are not asked to create a root user, in fact you know nothing about root. You install and use the distro. If you ever happen to su you can type the user passwrod and become root. You can also log into the root account this way. This was the main reason, other than Clem's political views, that I decided to move on.

In any case, the fix is just to reassign a decent root password, but root is now, in fact, enabled by default in Ubuntu and Mint, just in Ubuntu the password is random.

[beaker_]

If you really were god over your own machine, why don't you give your personal account god like permissions & authorizations, make root a nobody and quit whining because root can't login through gdm (never tried kdm, a console or enabling it?) or that some apps are checking if your are root.

[stefan1975]

well i agree with the OP that dumbing down the OS is essentially a bad thing no matter how wise the ideas behind them are. Should "we" ever do sudo by default I am also seriously considering moving on myself, i mean user passwords are usually not 12 random characters, caps, numbers, specials long. So having a dictionary based user password allowing either root or sudo rights is really beyond me (same reason why i think root X logins are bad, people using root for X access all day in my experience do not have a monthly changed random root password).

[craftyminion]

well i think it is blasphemy to follow ubuntu in the sudo area but i am pretty sure i saw a thread on the dev list the other day where the devs were making an argument to switch to sudo by default as well instead of su -c, so we might be going down the same road after all with nothing but blue seperating us.

Meh, I learned to stop worrying and now I love the bomb. Enabling sudo under Fedora is one of the first things I do these days, largely because I follow this excellent post install checklist (http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f11.html).

I find that sudo allows me a finer grain of control over superuser actions. Each time I do something rooty I have to invoke the Holy Name, so I'm thinking about what is going down. There are times when I still invoke su, when 20 minute terminal session is in order mainly.

I seem to recall that the redoubtable Linux Mint gives you the option of enabling the root account at post-install and offers a short explanation of the benefits and drawbacks of doing such.

The Crafty One

[stefan1975]

Meh, I learned to stop worrying and now I love the bomb. Enabling sudo under Fedora is one of the first things I do these days, largely because I follow this excellent post install checklist (http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f11.html).

I find that sudo allows me a finer grain of control over superuser actions. Each time I do something rooty I have to invoke the Holy Name, so I'm thinking about what is going down. There are times when I still invoke su, when 20 minute terminal session is in order mainly.

I seem to recall that the redoubtable Linux Mint gives you the option of enabling the root account at post-install and offers a short explanation of the benefits and drawbacks of doing such.

The Crafty One

oh don't get me wrong i have nothing against sudo, i even configure it on fedora and use it myself when i can .... with my l33th@ck0r password of course :-) I just don't think it is a good idea, like root logins, xorgzapping and whatnot to enable it for a regular user, using a regular non-complex password by default, or keeping that password for the rest of the session.

[JN4OldSchool]

I seem to recall that the redoubtable Linux Mint gives you the option of enabling the root account at post-install and offers a short explanation of the benefits and drawbacks of doing such.

The Crafty One

Not since Mint 7. See my above post and link. This is no longer offered as it is, in fact, set as a default with the user password.

[tester2007]

If you really were god over your own machine, why don't you give your personal account god like permissions & authorizations, make root a nobody and quit whining because root can't login through gdm (never tried kdm, a console or enabling it?) or that some apps are checking if your are root.

Even if you use KDM the gpk-application will not run and it is not a bug. The developers must check implicitly for UID=0 and exit with warning. I cannot understand why would anybody do that? God knows in how many other applications they do the same. Again I know enough how to give myself or another user privileges but you should know that the superuser have special privileges by design of LINUX which cannot be given any other way. An explicit hardcoding against root take these privileges away.

[stefan1975]

Even if you use KDM the gpk-application will not run and it is not a bug. The developers must check implicitly for UID=0 and exit with warning. I cannot understand why would anybody do that? God knows in how many other applications they do the same. Again I know enough how to give myself or another user privileges but you should know that the superuser have special privileges by design of LINUX which cannot be given any other way. An explicit hardcoding against root take these privileges away.

using F11_x64 from the KDE_LiveCD here and it allows me to log in as root just fine. on the other hand one could always do an init3 and log in as root on the console, this is not protected at all.

[craftyminion]

Not since Mint 7. See my above post and link. This is no longer offered as it is, in fact, set as a default with the user password.

Ah. Now there's a kick in the hiney. I always felt the Mint approach was an excellent compromise and given that compromises are rarely excellent it was to be applauded.

The Crafty One

[beaker_]

gpk-application? That's stopping you? You'll have to excuse me. :D

[adrianx]

Doesn't "sudo -i" give you a full root account - similar to "su -"? Of course, if you don't belong to the right groups, "sudo -i" won't do anything for you. So, your boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/concubine/dog/cat won't be able to cause havoc, but you - the primary user - should be able to rm -rf / to your heart's content? (Feel the power....) :D

Edit: Me, I always create separate accounts for everyone in my own little circle. Damn, my "porn" is mine.... they can go and find their own! :p

[Evil_Bert]

Sigh. :rolleyes:

Another developer-driven solution in search of a problem.

[bob]

(Moved to Reviews, Rants and Things That Make You Scream)

This is one of several threads that have been moved to this new section. We can't solve the world's problems, or change the thinking behind Fedora, but we still get to voice our dissent...even if nobody listens. :( And the restriction on Root has to be the most vocalized.

[tashirosgt]

Good move, Bob.

My (oft stated) opinion about what governs the market share of Linux distributions is that it doesn't have much to do with their convenience for "personal use". ("Personal use" is the factor usually discussed on this forum.) The acceptability of the distribution is dependent of whether it is suitable for "corporate use", by which I mean any centrally administered mass use of an OS by a business or by an educational institution etc. The focus there is on whether the IT department can effectively manage a large number of networked machines.

So I wonder if the move away from having an all-powerful root user is best understood in terms of making distributions suitable for corporate use. In a corporate situation you may need windows-like "security policies" that are passed down a pyramid of authority. Is root incompatible with that security model?

[sonoran]

Even if you use KDM the gpk-application will not run and it is not a bug. The developers must check implicitly for UID=0 and exit with warning. I cannot understand why would anybody do that?

As I understand this, and it is only from what I have read, not from personal experience, a program can no longer initialize the GTK2 libraries if it is running SETUID root - the library will refuse to initialize and exit with that warning.

The reason behind it is that the GTK libraries and GNOME libraries are too big and do too many diverse things to be made safe from security holes. These libraries do everything from keyboard input to loading and displaying graphics files.

So rather than going through 500,000+ lines of code, they have left it to the users of those libraries to perform the security duties.

The ultimate reason behind all this is obvious- do we want GNU/Linux to become a breeding ground for viruses, trojans, worms, rootkits - just like Windows?

[robert-e]

Sean,
Sorry for being late in replying; I have been busy being a grandfather, and installing Mint 7 on the side. LOL. Some things are looking good: I think I have been able to defang PulseAudio. There is only one more library file that I cannot uninstall, without trashing the gnome desktop. That is the same sort of experience I had with F10. I installed the alsa sound stuff, and will check tomorrow if the ham radio decoding programs work (if the youngster will let me).
The user/root thing is weird. Yet, I do prefer it to no root gui at all, at least while I am still learning the CLI. Perhaps then I won't care anymore.
The install was smooth, taking only about 10 minutes, including a custom partitioning. Nice. Now I have to see if I can get direct rendering with my ATI 9600 video card. That is guaranteed to be an interesting time. I do need googleearth when I am travelling into strange places that I have not visited before.

Next I will install the distro the Scottro suggested; Crunchbag?? Anyway, I have the site bookmarked. Maybe I will like it better than Fedora, but so far F8 is a winner for me.

I have to get some sleep now...the little guy will be poking at me to get up at the crack of dawn. We will have fun. Good luck with your book-learning. I don't do that anymore. Writing papers on esoteric topics, just to show I read the material got old real fast. Good on you!

Best regards,
Bob

[scottro]

#!Crunchbang.

The reason, though, that they didn't have pulse audio was, as far as I know because they were based on Ubuntu 8.04, rather than 9.whatever it is. I'm not sure what their current status is, I haven't had time to keep up with them. Their main attraction is probably to non-Gnome users, as they use openbox by default.

There's also Arch, which comes with no desktop by default, and gives you a lot more flexibility in what packages you want to use--the downside being that it takes a little longer to setup your system.
@bob, I think foks have gotten resigned to the root thing, I suspect pulse gets more vocalization right now. Hrrm, there's a pun there somewhere.

[creeping death]

@tester2007, if you feel so strongly about this , you should give the fedora developers your feedback...

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f11/en-US/index.html#sect-Release_Notes-Feedback

[scottro]

Don't bother. They didn't listen to Alan Cox, so they aren't going to change it.

There were a bunch of well reasoned arguments by people with known experience and they did it anyway. Whether it's an effort to imitate Ubuntu or something else, I have no idea.

Rahul and others have given the arguments for it quite eloquently. Though I disagree, it doesn't affect me as I don't use Gnome or GDM, and indeed, one of the first things I do is change to a text mode boot. <shrug>.

At any rate, that's one reason Bob put it in this subforum. :)

[JN4OldSchool]

Hello Robert-e Bob,

Hope you enjoy your Mint 7 install, I have found it to be the best yet. Just make sure you do this:

su (your user password)
passwd
(type your new "full strength" password twice)
exit

Hopefully your sudo user has a tight passwd too but I prefer root to be locked down good.

Bob, Scott mentioned it and I would not have thought about recommending it to you, but with your particular problems you may want to consider trying Arch. It is daunting when you first look at it, but really it is quite easy and straight forward once you dig in. I said the same about Gentoo but this is really quit a bit easier. Just follow the manual (google Arch and head for the wiki). Do an FTP install (if you can) and then install the DE of your choice over it. Stefan seems to dig KDE quite well with Arch, so much that I have been tempted to triple boot another Arch install just to try it out myself. Anyway, it is a beautiful system, you piece it together just how you want it. It comes with nano and vi, the rest is up to you. It might be the perfect solution for you and it really does not require too much work, it took me about three hours my first install then a little faster for my laptop, including wireless and power management. I borked that install by losing my fstab and had to do it over and reached the same place in just over an hour the last time. I am comfortable enough with it now that I wouldnt hesitate to install it on any computer. Just a thought.

I think you will find crunchbang is probably too spartan for your tastes, though I need to try that one too. I am using Fluxbox on all my installs now so it would be right up my alley.

[robert-e]

Thanks for the tip re su password. Did it. Prompt turns red when root: nice touch. Not really needed since # works fine, but it's the thought that counts. Good that Clem can do his own thinking. Now if he could only see the light re PA; ie stacking layer upon layer in Linux Sound. Kind of reminds me of a saying by an old German friend of mine: "Too much friggin in the riggin!". LOL

I will get around to trying out Arch, since my perception is that Fedora (and Linux generally) is slowly going down the garden path, and if I want to keep using it, I am going to have to do some serious learning, in order to do the serious tweaking that will be needed. I have the idea that Arch will force me into that mode...lol.

Again, thanks for your observations and suggestions.

Best regards,
Bob

[JN4OldSchool]

Thanks for the tip re su password. Did it. Prompt turns red when root: nice touch. Not really needed since # works fine, but it's the thought that counts. Good that Clem can do his own thinking. Now if he could only see the light re PA; ie stacking layer upon layer in Linux Sound. Kind of reminds me of a saying by an old German friend of mine: "Too much friggin in the riggin!". LOL

I will get around to trying out Arch, since my perception is that Fedora (and Linux generally) is slowly going down the garden path, and if I want to keep using it, I am going to have to do some serious learning, in order to do the serious tweaking that will be needed. I have the idea that Arch will force me into that mode...lol.

Again, thanks for your observations and suggestions.

Best regards,
Bob

Naw, Arch is very doable for you. Plus, once you have it set up you shouldnt have to mess with it ever again, it is a rolling release. Really, I wouldnt BS you, I think Gentoo would be a huge bite for you, I would not suggest it. But you can do Arch, it really is easy. Just as long as you arent freaked out by the text install and the fact that it really comes with NOTHING preinstalled. You will need to research and install every package you want. Though if you use KDE that will probably install most everything in one shot. I used flux so i had to think of every single little thing such as PDF reader, image viewer, terminal, file manager, text editor...You get the idea. But the freedom and flexibility this allows is what Linux was always supposed to be. There is no compromise, my install is MINE!!! Right down to using slim as the dm and ossv4 for audio. It does include policykit though and while you can still use an xorg it will default to HAL policies. I suppose this is just how things are going to be though and it works.

[robert-e]

Sean,
I am back in F8 now. Odd thing is, when I did your "su password" change, Mint still wants the User name password. My "long" root password that I entered does not do anything rootwise. In fact, I think that Mint ignored the whole exercise. So I guess I am no further ahead on that front. Geez, I sure wish those guys would quit screwing around with superuser.

I did read the link that Sonoran?? made with regards to security, and not want to inpect the library for security issues. I think that is a red herring. If they were/are so concerned, it would not be hard to require root password to be a dozen or so charactors, or to just make it darn difficult to get root. Then newbs would chose user account (with a smaller/easier password. Or only disable root login when connected to the internet, perhaps. I would not much like that, but it would be preferable to the crap we are getting now. Anyway, enough of that...I am just getting worked up again....I got to go play with my grandson now. Take care.

Best regards,
Bob

[sonoran]

Good move, Bob.

My (oft stated) opinion about what governs the market share of Linux distributions is that it doesn't have much to do with their convenience for "personal use". ("Personal use" is the factor usually discussed on this forum.) The acceptability of the distribution is dependent of whether it is suitable for "corporate use", by which I mean any centrally administered mass use of an OS by a business or by an educational institution etc. The focus there is on whether the IT department can effectively manage a large number of networked machines.

So I wonder if the move away from having an all-powerful root user is best understood in terms of making distributions suitable for corporate use. In a corporate situation you may need windows-like "security policies" that are passed down a pyramid of authority. Is root incompatible with that security model?

Very astute observation, tashirosgt. It would explain a number of things in Fedora that are otherwise difficult to fathom, like the making of LVM default, and services like SSH.

[robert-e]

Further...this concept might help explain why PulseAudio Server is getting so much Dev play; IIRC, it claims to do network audio (flawlessly?). That would explain why another layer of programing is growing on top of the existing sound drivers.

Now if this (corporate) leanings of Fedora, et al is correct; will we find forks off Fedora and it's ilk that single-users of desktops might find more amienable? I imagine that the icing will be on the cake in a year or so, at least in Fedora's case.

Regards,
Bob

[scottro]

Yes, it would explain pulse audio. In many corporate environments, they don't WANT you to have sound on a workstation, so using pulseaudio would often solve that issue. :D

[stefan1975]

Stefan seems to dig KDE quite well with Arch, so much that I have been tempted to triple boot another Arch install just to try it out myself.

i must say that i really like that indeed. so much that i have actually replaced F11 on my desktop with Zrch and KDE. I must say though that I use KDEmod and not the KDE in the repos. With KDE3.x KDEmod was always much better then KDE and in KDE4 they mainly have some extra tools (shaman packagemaner) and have a modular KDE4 experience, so I can do a "pacman -S kdemod-minimal" to have a bare minimal KDE experience and just grab what I use from the repos, a really KISS approach to using KDE i believe. KDEmod is a seperate repo though from regular KDE that had to be activated prior to installing: http://kdemod.ath.cx/download.html

They also have a QT based Arch linux live cd, running Arch and KDEmod that is installable as well, so you can try before you buy .... it is still in alpha but I hear good things about it and it is just the livecd that is alpha, kdemod and the Arch repos are the same as with pure Arch: http://kdemod.ath.cx/download-iso.html#screenshots

I must say that Arch on my desktop is nearly *twice* as fast as F11 was, of course it helps that I don't use LVM, encryption, SElinux, Bluetooth, NetworkManager, alsa, pulseaudio, iptables, etc. anymore ..... but I was shocked by the difference. I am also so happy with OSSv4 instead of that %^#$%$ pulseaudio crap.

I have also finally said goodbye to Firefox3.5 and just installed a QT4 based opera10 to have a native browsing experience in kdemod, opera10-qt4 is in the archlinux.fr repos where yaourt is as well.

setting up Arch is really quite simple, after the default FTP install (where i select both base as well as devel) i just do the following:

pacman -S yaourt kdemod-minimal xorg oss nvidia nvidia-utils firefox ttf-dejavu ttf-liberation ttf-ms-fonts unzip zip arj tar openssh dnsutils sudo prelink preload powertop bzip2 most bash-completion dvd+rw-tools wireless_tools cups vlc iptables unrar laptop-mode-tools iwlwifi-3945-ucode cpufrequtils crda jre dialog netcfg customizepkg pacman-color colordiff yaourt ntp hwdetect unrtf imagemagick p7zip cdrkit html2text transmission-cli htop gparted flashplugin libnotify fam

an "nvidia-xconfig" gives me a working xorg.conf and I am home free.

i run just these deamons:
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng hal oss preload fam @net-profiles @sshd @netfs @crond @cups)

so all in all it feels good to be running it again, and even without a feature call 20second boot it is faster starting up then F11 is.

so you could just try the chakra livecd and see if you like it.
Stefan

[stefan1975]

oh yes, it lets you log in as root as well. just to get this on-topic again.

[neerajrawat1]

guys i have installed fedora 11 and everything went fine but d probs m facing is i cant login as a root user in gui mode but with the same details i can login using command line,in gui i can login only as another user dats not d root so any guess dat cant we login as root in gui mode or sumthing is wrong at my end has any1 faced dz kinda probs in fedora 11 or anyother version where we can login to command mode as root but not in gui it shows cant authenticate

[Simian Man]

It's been disabled for security reasons. If you want to get around this, a search will give you the workaround. But you really shouldn't need to login as root.

[leigh123linux]

guys i have installed fedora 11 and everything went fine but d probs m facing is i cant login as a root user in gui mode but with the same details i can login using command line,in gui i can login only as another user dats not d root so any guess dat cant we login as root in gui mode or sumthing is wrong at my end has any1 faced dz kinda probs in fedora 11 or anyother version where we can login to command mode as root but not in gui it shows cant authenticate


Threads merged.

[neerajrawat1]

but i can login as root in the command mode can u suggest me how to enable that thing i wanna login as root in gui as well if wish to install few softwares den what to do?

[neerajrawat1]

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Enabling_Root_User_For_GNOME_Display_Manager

i got the answer here mate thanks for the reply its been blocked for security reason as u said

[JN4OldSchool]

guys i have installed fedora 11 and everything went fine but d probs m facing is i cant login as a root user in gui mode but with the same details i can login using command line,in gui i can login only as another user dats not d root so any guess dat cant we login as root in gui mode or sumthing is wrong at my end has any1 faced dz kinda probs in fedora 11 or anyother version where we can login to command mode as root but not in gui it shows cant authenticate

I believe this may be what you are asking:

Guys, I have installed Fedora 11 and everything went fine but the problem I am facing is that I cannot log in as root user in the GUI mode. However, I can log in using the command line, but in GUI I can only log in as another user that is not root. So, my guess is that we cannot log in as root in the GUI mode or else something else is wrong at my end. Has anyone faced these kinds of problems in Fedora 11 or another version, where we can log in to command line as root but not in GUI because it shows it cannot authenticate?

If that is the case then your answer is you cannot log in as root in the GUI mode by default. You can change this, but unless you have a very specific reason for this you should probably do what you need from the user account. Of course you will probably ignore this advice and will simply override the default because "you can." Your computer. Have fun. :)

[neerajrawat1]

JN4OldSchool thanks mate yup u r right i got the solution

[JN4OldSchool]

u r welcum! :D

[stefan1975]

but i can login as root in the command mode can u suggest me how to enable that thing i wanna login as root in gui as well if wish to install few softwares den what to do?

installing software using packagekit under your normal user account (not root) will ask for the root password when needed, as will most other applications that need elevated user rights. Hardly any apps will require you to login gnome as root.

[scottro]

@neerrajrawt1, please don't use text speak. (That is u, for u, r for are and so on.)

We actually mention that in the forum guidelines--also, please keep in mind, many busy forum members will just ignore such posts.

Not having English as a first language and grammatical mistakes are no problem at all--however, textspeak, rather than a problem with English is usually just laziness. :)

[stevea]

I believe this may be what you are asking:

Guys, I have installed Fedora 11 and everything went fine but the problem I am facing is that I cannot log in as root user in the GUI mode. However, I can log in using the command line, but in GUI I can only log in as another user that is not root. So, my guess is that we cannot log in as root in the GUI mode or else something else is wrong at my end. Has anyone faced these kinds of problems in Fedora 11 or another version, where we can log in to command line as root but not in GUI because it shows it cannot authenticate?

If that is the case then your answer is you cannot log in as root in the GUI mode by default. You can change this, but unless you have a very specific reason for this you should probably do what you need from the user account. Of course you will probably ignore this advice and will simply override the default because "you can." Your computer. Have fun. :)

The no-root-gui login is strictly due to the gdm gui login greeter. It's not the degault under KDE only GNome.

Anyway you can use kdm (which looks nicer IMO) as the login program and solve the problem neatly. Yes you can still use the gnome desktop w/ the kdm login prog.
su -
yum -y install kdm
echo "DISPLAYMANAGER=KDE" > /etc/syconfig/desktop

The only thing to kep in mind is that X11 has some additional security holes that it exposes to the local system (not the network by default). On a multiuser system or one that might contain trojans it's not wise to use root/Gui.