[Bug 80753] Re: Synaptic should be able to switch from non-root to root mode without losing state

[Michael Vogt]

Hey James! Its great to hear that you work on bug #830492 and synaptic
in general. It did not get as much attention from me as it deserves
because my regular day job keeps me very busy. But I would love to hear
if you might be interessted in a working on a fix for this bug in
synpatic. It should actually not be that hard, I'm happy to help with
it!

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/80753

Title:
  Synaptic should be able to switch from non-root to root mode without
  losing state

Status in “synaptic” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: synaptic

  When started without super-user privileges Synaptic goes into some
  kind of "read-only" mode instead of asking for the privileges when
  clicking on "apply".

  It does show an info window at startup describing the situation, which
  I guess is OK (and makes this more of an enhancement request rather
  than a bug), but it's very easy to click-through it and forget. The
  "Apply" button is afterwards disabled, and the reason is easy to
  forget by this time.

  This can be worked-around by using "gksu synaptic" as a menu-entry,
  but that's wrong from a security perspective (and annoying), as the
  superuser privileges are only required for applying the changes. (For
  instance, I may start synaptic just to check if I have something
  installed or if there are any updates available.) Asking for passwords
  before it being necessary -- and even before knowing if it's necessary
  -- is very bad security practice, because frequency trains people to
  enter their password without thinking.

  The package manager that's started by the Add/Remove... standard menu
  entry is smart enough to do that, but unfortunately it's not a full
  replacement for Synaptic (I don't know why, but not all packages are
  available for selection using it).

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