desktop-packages team mailing list archive

[Eliah Kagan <degeneracypressure@xxxxxxxxx>]

*** This bug is a duplicate of bug 796076 ***
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/796076

I don't dispute that this bug is a duplicate of bug 796076, but I am
posting here to address some advice from david6 which is potentially
dangerous if applied.

It is a bad idea to run graphical programs that save user-specific
configuration data, like gedit, with sudo (without special flags to make
it behave like those programs[1]) rather than gksu/gksudo/kdesudo. But
not for security reasons. This is a bad idea because such programs often
create or modify configuration data in such a way that the configuration
files are accessible only by root, and then the application is fully or
partially broken when run by the user unprivileged. (This could then
become a security problem if the configuration data contained secret
information which was then oversimplistically changed back to be owned
by the non-root user, but I am not aware of any situation where this has
been a problem, especially since such users are usually administrators
who are permitted to read the data anyway.) See
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo for details.

[1] Actually, those programs are graphical frontends for sudo, and they
make sudo behave properly by passing special flags such as -H. (But it
is a bit more complex than that, so you may still experience some
problems if you run sudo -H instead of gksu/gksudo/kdesudo.)

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to gedit in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/838404

Title:
  opening existing file with gksu gedit creates untitled document

Status in Light-Weight Text Editor for Gnome:
  New
Status in “gedit” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  When opening a text file as super user, using gksu gedit ...., the
  requested file opens, along with a second, untitled document.  This is
  slightly annoying, since gedit will ask if the untitled document
  should be saved once the desired file has been edited and gedit is
  closed.  Opening a file as a regular user does not have this problem.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
  Package: gedit 3.1.4-0ubuntu1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.15-generic 3.0.3
  Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic i686
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Wed Aug 31 14:12:52 2011
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
  SourcePackage: gedit
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-08-26 (4 days ago)

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/gedit/+bug/838404/+subscriptions