On 02/29/2012 07:46 AM, Mark Bidewell wrote:

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 7:36 AM, Emanuel Rietveld<codehotter@gmail.com>wrote:

On 02/29/2012 01:15 PM, drago01 wrote:

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Neal Becker<ndbecker2@gmail.com>   wrote:

I think he's got a point

http://www.osnews.com/story/**25659/Torvalds_requiring_root_**
password_for_mundane_things_**is_quot_moronic_quot_<http://www.osnews.com/story/25659/Torvalds_requiring_root_password_for_mundane_things_is_quot_moronic_quot_>

Yeah but last time we tried this in fedora it got "flamefested" so we
had to revert.

Perhaps a solution is adding a group with the needed permissions and make
it really easy to add an account to that group.

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+1 to this.  Many tasks should not require full root permissions to
execute. Having a set of groups centered around tasks (install printers,
install software, etc.)  would definitely make this simpler.  This method
would also be arguably be more secure than sudo as processes don't run with
root permission therefore root privileged cannot be gained by exploiting a
program.   Another situation where having a group based security would be
nice is access to privileged ports.  Try running JBoss as a non-root user
on port 80.

Another +1 to the groups idea.  It would enable a simple convenience feature as well:  When prompting a user for the root password to do something the first time, include a check-box to add the user to the proper group behind-the-scene (with a warning that user needs to logout/login for change to be effective).  Maybe also include a simple management program to enable/disable/display allowed functionality for specific users based on descriptions (i.e. instead of group name - which may be meaningless to a n00b).  Kind of like how android permissions look, but with more of a management focus.