KUbuntu, root passwords and broken authentication

[Derek Broughton]

Daniel Pittman wrote:

> After the selection of the sudo back-end in favour of the su back-end
> kdesu still serves the same purpose but uses an alternate mechanism.
> 
> If there were a 'chiark-really', 'calife' or even 'ssh to localhost'
> back-end then kdesu would /still/ serve the same purpose.

kpackage is one tool that does something like this - offering a choice of
authorization methods.  Of course, if you already prevent root from ssh'ing
to your system (iirc, kubuntu does this by default, but I might have done
that), ssh is not an option.  The mechanism could fairly easily be moved
from the application to kdesu...

> The mechanism 
> would be different, possibly radically so, but the purpose the same.
> 
>> You don't have to take my word for it, this is evidenced by the fact
>> that any user not in the 'admin' group is pestered for password they
>> can't possibly provide.
> 
> Actually, they are asked to provide a password after requesting an
> operation requiring privileges.
> 
> This is traditional Unix model: if you don't have to give away
> information, and if that secrecy adds to security, then you should not
> give it way.

It's more than just a traditional Unix model, it's the model subscribed to
by standards organizations.

>> Kubuntu users aren't coming in cold.  Anyone with no prior Linux
>> experience could have fired up Ubuntu and been off without a second
>> thought.  I'd probably recommend Ubuntu over Kubuntu to a newbie.
...
>> Kubuntu users are coming in expecting the KDE experience with KDE
>> "assumptions" in tow.  Why bother creating kubuntu otherwise?

I'm not buying that.  For one reason, I recommend Kubuntu to Windows users
because it can look very little different from what they expect.  So, they
come in _very_ cold from a Linux viewpoint.  For another, Gnome does the
same thing - and did it before KDE.  I still remember the first time I
fired up a Gnome app in Debian and gksu asked me for _my_ password when
kdesu would have asked for root's - that had to be at least three years
ago, before we had (k)Ubuntu.

> Any distribution could choose to build KDE with the sudo backend for
> kdesu, or to ship without a root password.

Ditto for gnome.

>> Points to Kubuntu for creatively modifying KDE to use sudo.  Maybe
>> more work on the KDE side of things will improve kdesu authorizing
>> options without resorting to hacking in sudo.

You wanted to hack in sudo so that you could use the otherwise unnecessary
root password.  For the rest of us, it works perfectly without any hacking.

> On that front I cannot fault Ubuntu at all -- though I can understand
> where it may be a surprise when you move from a distribution that
> doesn't do things the same way.

It's not as if there aren't other things that other distros don't do in very
different ways :-)  After 7 or 8 years of Debian-based systems, I've
finally got to the point where I can guess where a file must exist in the
filesystem hierarchy.  Now that I'm administering a CentOS system, nothing
seems to be where it belongs!

> I can't disagree with that statement at all.  Ubuntu make, perhaps, more
> changes to their software than others rather than less.  Most of them,
> though, are sufficiently unobtrusive and correct that people don't
> complain.[1]
... 
> Footnotes:
> [1]  My favorite is that a large part of the support for SMP
>      alternatives in the kernel is thanks to Ubuntu working hard to test
>      and promote it.  Simple, correct and very unobtrusive.

Indeed - and yet I keep seeing posts from people asking either "where is the
SMP kernel?" or "why am I running an SMP kernel?" - you just can't please
everyone :-)
-- 
derek