So you're running
Linux on your desktop. That's pretty cool alright. And for sure you are not logging in as
root all the time, but as a regular user, because you are security-conscious, true?
Then this post is for you. Obviously you are very tired of entering the root password every time you want to install or configure something, or when you simply want a rootshell and play god.
Linux features the
pam authentication system which lets you plug in modules that take care of authenticating users in specific ways. One such module is
pam_wheel. This module restricts root access to users in the
wheel group, and also lets those users authenticate without a password.
This opens up a nice possibility of putting our regular user in the wheel group and never having to specify the root password again, while disallowing all other users to become root.
Configuration[for OpenSUSE and most other distros]
* Add the line "auth sufficient pam_wheel.so trust use_uid" to
/etc/pam.d/common-auth (or /etc/pam.d/su on other distros)
* Add your username to the group
wheel (in /etc/group or via Yast)
* Voila! Now you can use
su or
sux to become root in a shell without a password or, in Gnome, start YaST without a password (but only as your own user).
* For KDE, this is not enough to start YaST without a password. The program
kdesu must be told to use sux by adding the file
kdesurc in
/opt/kde3/share/config with the following content:
[super-user-command]
super-user-command=sux
NOW you can start YaST in KDE and it won't ask for a password anymore. Beware that you may not be able to distinguish between privileged and non-privileged graphical programs though. And enjoy a few less password entries each day.
Labels: imark, linux, pam, yast
