Hi Thomas, first, this is rather stuff for ubuntu-devel-discuss@, it is not at all launchpad related. Much of it is also just matter for ubuntu-users@, too. Thomas Delbeke [2008-10-20 3:36 +0100]: > The problem is that they use their system in a way that Newbies do not. The commands you mentioned are not at all something "newbies" as in "my mother" would ever use. They seem to come from some ill-advising forum posts or other places and many people just blindly copy them without actually understanding what they do? If you find such commands on wiki.u.c. or help.u.c., please point them out so that we can fix them. > What lies at the cause of this problem is the following: > > A) If you download packages through the gnome-terminal you will have to call > root: '$ sudo apt-get ...'. The default download folder for this > /home/$USER. This means that all packages you download their are owned by > root. apt-get install won't download to $HOME, and apt-get source shouldn't be called as root. If you do, you get exactly what you asked for. > If you open nautilus in the gui another thing that isn't at all common, I'd say :) >, you will in fact open '$ nautilus ...' and not '$ sudo nautilus >...'. This means that you cannot move any source packages to the >waste bin. No, because they are owned by root. You can remove single root owned files from your home directory, but not files from a root-owned directory. I don't see anything wrong with that behaviour, and it is how Unix works since the beginning of time. What do you see wrong with this? > If you open '$ sudo nautilus' you can change read > and write permissions through the gui (right click > properties > > permissions) but you still cannot change ownership in group. That is: you > have to snipe out every individual file, you cannot use ctrl+A and > ctrl-left_click to unselect. You can delete the entire folder, though. > This makes it very tempting for newbies to just: '$ cd ; sudo chmod -cR 777 > . ; sudo chown -cR 1000 .'. > [...] > Anyway, the above command leads to unsafe ownership of a number of hidden > files: Absolutely. It's one of 203943294238 ways to shoot yourself in the foot. We should fix documentation which advises something stupid like this, and otherwise just shrug. > Configuring debconf It's not quite clear to me what this quotation of debconf frontends, pam, and cracklib was meaning to convey? > C) If you use your system in this way it will become highly unstable and you > will experience a number of crashes that the bug squad can not easily > verify. "this way" -> using cracklib? > Commands that trigger the problem: You mean those are ways to crash consolekit? If you know reproducers for any of the consolekit crashes reported in Launchpad, it would be appreciated if you could describe them there. On this list they will just be ignored, I'm afraid. > Make nautilus able to change ownership and permissions in bulk, also when > called without sudo, or maybe only for /home or /home/$USER No. First, it's not even possible (the kernel rightfully enforces user privileges, not nautilus), and second it would be wrong. If you create directories as root in your $HOME, you have to remove files in them them as root. > Replace all sensitive hidden files in /home/$USER with symlinks that will > not be affected. That's another weird proposition. There seem to be lots of apparently unrelated and strange things mentioned in your mail, but I'm still not at all clear what your *actual* problem is. Is it a consolekit crash? If so, which bug number? Let's discuss it properly there. Thank you! Martin -- Martin Pitt | http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org)
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