Invocation of applications which require root permitions

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

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It would appear that on Jan 6, Tim Frost did say:

> Don't use 'su -' as that does a full root login.
> 
> In particular, X authentication settings are lost.
> 
> Either run
> 	su root -c synaptic
> or
> 	sudo synaptic
> 
> as they will pass the X DISPLAY and XAUTH settings to the root process.
> 
> (Or run synaptic from the menus, which will use gksudo in place of
> su/sudo, and will provide the required environment)


Hmmmnnnn lets see if I just learned something here...

Pardon me for intruding on this thread but do I understand that if my
system has a root password (Yeah I know it's not considered safe but
it's not remotely accessible, the router isn't allowed to forward _any_
ports...)

And if on this system I'm using an account that has NOT been set up
properly as a sudoer and need to run one of those graphical tools that
don't work when the root user calls them on the command line in the form
of:

# COMMAND

Which is probably because the ubuntu approved method expects:

$ sudo COMMAND 
{user password}

I can substitute:

$ su root -c COMMAND
{root password}

and expect the same results a sudoer user would have got from the
recommended sudo command line????

That would be very useful information to know. even if I usually prefer
non-gui root tools when I can remember how to use them, because in the
ubuntu and kubuntu user groups I'm much more likely to get a useful
suggestion in the form of:

$ sudo "Command string"

And rather than re-debate why I have a root login every time I need to
ask for something that actually works for the root account when:

# "Command string" 

fails, I'd much rather try:

$ su root -c "command string"

Thank you for the clue <grin>



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