[Desktop_printing] Portland tool: xdg-su (Was: Role of CUPS and error handling)

[Bastian, Waldo]

With Portland we will provide a set of well defined interfaces such as
xdg-su together with a reference implementation and Linux distributions
can adjust these tools as they see fit as long as they maintain
compatibility with the defined interface. I believe that Kubuntu already
ships a verion of kdesu that uses sudo instead of su, and as a result
xdg-su will use sudo as well then in that case.

Note that we encourage software vendors (in this case a printer vendor)
that want to use xdg-utils to include a copy along with their
application as fallback but to use the version of xdg-utils that's
included with the operating system if such version is present. That way
the vendor will benefit from distribution specific adjustments such as
the use of sudo instead of su.

Waldo Bastian
Linux Client Architect - Channel Platform Solutions Group
Intel Corporation - http://www.intel.com/go/linux
OSDL DTL Tech Board Chairman

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Sweet [mailto:mike at easysw.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 5:27 AM
>To: Bastian, Waldo
>Cc: desktop_printing at lists.osdl.org
>Subject: Re: [Desktop_printing] Portland tool: xdg-su (Was: Role of
CUPS
>and error handling)
>
>Bastian, Waldo wrote:
>>> 2.
>>> Test that the effective user id is 0
>>> otherwise tell the user in the user's language
>>> that he must switch to root before running the setup program.
>>
>> *shameless plug*
>> This step can be automated with the xdg-su tool from the Portland
>> project.
>> See http://portland.freedesktop.org/wiki/TaskSu
>
>Probably off-topic, but what about supporting sudo functionality,
>such that the user only needs to know their own password and not the
>root password?
>
>Seems to be a better choice from a security and usability
>standpoint...
>
>--
>______________________________________________________________________
>Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
>Internet Printing and Publishing Software        http://www.easysw.com