Re: [Usability] Re: Button ordering

[Sander Vesik <Sander Vesik Sun COM>]

On Sun, 4 Nov 2001, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

> 
> This is soooo not related to the original thread...
> 
> On 04Nov2001 05:24PM (-0800), Seth Nickell wrote:
> > 
> > I have absolutely no clue about these issues or how feasible this stuff
> > is. For example, is it possible to spawn a thread as a different user?
> > (probably not, just fishing). Or maybe we could do this with CORBA or
> > something. *shrug* I have absolutely no clue. MacOS/X seems to be able
> > to do something like this, no clue if its easy for developers or not.
> 
> Here is how OS X does it:
> 
> * There is an `admin' group of users who should have priveleged access.
> 
> * There is an API to prompt a user for the username and password of
> any user in the admin group, and launch a child process as root if
> authentication is successful.
> 

This part is BSD roots - under BSD you traditionaly need to be a member of
a group (historicaly called wheel) to be able to su to root. If you aren't
a member, knowing the root password does you no good. Calling "wheel" 
"admin" is just being user friendly, I guess 8-)

[snip]

> 
> There is really no magic here, we could implement something similar
> using PAM, CORBA and a bit of UI gadgetry.
> 

The correct way top do is to require people to have kerberos and not
reinvent tht part. Whetever that is feasible or not is a different matter.

> Regards,
> 
> Maciej
> 

	Sander

"I don't think there is intelligent life within our solar system"
	-- Brian Behlendorf