My solution to gksu being deprecated/Buster.

[Deb-fan]

^ Welkies Debbie.

@Wiz10k: Also from what I understand Openbox may be killed off, if not rewritten due to Wayland !!!! That alone is reason to stop all work on any such Waylandish thingy until such time as any needs of Openbox have been seen to !!!! The Xwayland thing aggravates me as well. Backwards compatibility, blahblahblah, we'll just run an X server along with our new thingy, blahblahblah. Touch Openbox and die you IBM-borg bastids !!!

Oops, nother mid-rant poster !

Some people using their comps for "important" stuff might actually know what they're doing chief. Or they may want to put some effort into learning. I included 1,700 disclaimers and warnings, what more am I reasonably supposed to do. Figure out how to make my post text red (and make it appear to be dripping blood.) The polkit thing is stupid, it's stupid ... plain and simple. I prefer to be treated like an adult, don't need my computer deciding it gets to tell me what to do and how to do it. Arghhhh, have a lot of respecto for you Hoas but in many things we're never going to see eye to eye. You've been harping on Frankendeb's and how they're a horrible disaster waiting to happen for years. I ran Frankendebs without any problems ... for YEARS. Many of us can actually competently make our own choices and admin our friggin OS installs.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

You've been harping on Frankendeb's and how they're a horrible disaster waiting to happen for years. I ran Frankendebs without any problems ... for YEARS.

And I have YEARS of threads in which people have fucked their systems completely by mixing repositories. I think my body of evidence is substantially more significant than yours

[Deb-fan]

Whatever you say-type dude.

[Deb-fan]

Whatever you say-type dude. I've also seen 8 gazillion threads of people who couldn't identify their vidcard-graphics and figure out which module was needed or how to install it. Polkit or no polkit and policy files. Incompetent nixers can and will pooch their OS's. The only way to change that would be to make an OS that's automagic and fool-proof. Imo this is actually possible but would mean stripping away so much freedom would render gnu/Linux a meaningless joke in terms of what it's supposed to be.

[Deb-fan]

Also freedom comes with the power to make mistakes and bad choices and to hopefully learn from them. I learned a TON from imploding gnu/Nix installs far and wide, esp at first. Now it's once every other blue moon and usually resort to restoring a backup cause I don't want to spend the time to fix whatever problem I've inflicted. Also there ya go, people who use their comp's for important stuff might want to think about a backup/restore plan. Something goes wrong, wham restore a backup, even on this ancient pc I'd be back in business in 15mins or so.

[Deb-fan]

^ That will open a copy of the file in gedit as your normal user and only invoke root (via gvfs) to save the file.

Keep having to ask myself, what the hades am I missing here ?!?!? Ok, so such text editor process only gets to be root in the mere miliseconds as it saves any file ? Ok assuming it doesn't have a corrupt policy file, a malicious one and has one which clearly and correctly restricts it to this flash of time in which it can still save ANY file on the OS. Scratches head ... hmmmm, still not really seeing what the friggin big difference is !!! I open leafpad, yep, it's got a magic and correct policy file for it, pop open /etc/fstab, select all, backspace ... and everything deletes, save the sucker or it's one which could even autosave periodically, end result, empty fstab. Eventually reboot ... OS informs me, ummmm, you don't have anything in your fstab file fella, we's got a problem here.

Graphical file-manager, can open/edit anything with priv's butttttttt I have a policy file which makes sure I can only open/edit anything with priv's. Presumably when I make changes to xyz, up pops the keyring to ask for passwd confirmation, as clearly stated in the policy file ? AHHHHHH !!!

I say again ... this is somehow progress ??!?!?!?! Just my 2 cents, will take my chances sticking with gksu or lxqt-sudo and polkit can grab up all the policy files it pleases and stick them up it's <censored>. Tyvm.

[Bulkley]

I'm gonna say what I said in the other thread. Wonder how many folks here are running X as root?

Not me. I don't even use sudo. I still use su (although I have added the -) when I need to use access root.

Pointless observation and includ rant: In many ways think gnu/Linux is regressing, when it was an uber diverse sub-culture of geeks who were contributing cause they love tech, it was rich and full. Now with so much control consolidated in the hands of a few (commercial interests, like Redhat etc etc.) It in my view has been diving towards the toilet. Not that all those kickbutt volunteers and passionate geeks aren't still around contributing just that many high level decisions are out of their hands now.

The whole Unix philosophy thingy, something made to do one thing, do it well and be interoperable with everything else. I don't so much dislike systemd, actually generally impressed with it but things in my view are moving in the wrong direction. Installed a minimal netinstall of Buster and have been hacking away at it, trying to get it to be what I want of it. One thing is that my beloved Ceni isn't of use to me any longer and am looking around for an equally good/effective minimal wifi/networking solution = networkd atm and one thing I noticed is just how problematic and complex handling something like /etc/resolv.conf has gotten. Sixty-four different things want to screw with it now, when it used to be a matter of editing a file, add your friggin dns server(s) of choice ... on with life.

What you are describing is why I still run Stretch. I've Tried Buster many times, have it on virtual, and it frustrates me at every turn. Instructions and procedures I've been using for many years suddenly don't work and I don't want the learning curve. Not interested.

[Deb-fan]

^ Feel your pain. Can be a lot to process and seems all of a sudden though in Debian's defense much of this junk has been on the horizon for a long time. Also think many very good projects, one such being the amazing-ness that is Debian get their hand forced by upstream. It's just not practical or manageable (even possible) for them to attempt to take over all the heavy lifting they'd have to deal with to take over major upstream requirements.

To stay afloat guessing they've got to compromise and cope like the rest of us. Though in this case, I'm struggling to see anything much of a real benefit. In a cloud computing, corporate, multiuser environment ? Dunno ... seems like mixing up crap for craps sake. Really should do more research into this nonsense. Has to be something to it or why do it ? Eventually will try the new "approved" way of doing this elevated priv's deal. I first encountered this in Linux Mint, started out with LM10 and every couple years install some of their releases just to see how it's coming along.

Gksudo not working, hmmmm ??? Tried the pkexec and admin:// thing in recent LM and it didn't friggin work, in MINT, one of the most popular distro's around ! Soon said screw this, tracked down some archives for gksu/do and got them working as I was used to. Will get around to dorking with this topic more for now I'm happy using even deprecated methods(and packages). Until then this is still Debian gnu/Linux, this is my install and I'm the admin of it so as long as it works for me, not sure what anyone should have to say about it. Whole point of this stupid thread was to point out people have options. Think I made it clear it isn't the best practice or most approved of choice.

[stevepusser]

MX Linux made a custom mx-pkexec package, and its gksu is just a link to mx-pkexec, but if you want a GUI deb installer that still works, just install deepin-deb-installer from the standard repos. MX also has right-click deb install custom actions for Thunar and Dolphin, which I prefer because they can install any number of debs at one time, and I bet the Thunar xml version could be adapted to other file managers that use similar xml extensions.

Another workaround is to install local-apt-repository, and write a little custom "lar" script that copies debs to /srv/local-apt-repository. Then they appear in your apt database after it's updated--at least if you're running systemd. The script needs one extra command if you're not:

Code: Select all

cat /usr/local/bin/lar

#!/bin/sh
cp *.deb /srv/local-apt-repository
/usr/lib/local-apt-repository/rebuild


I use it to test install backported packages like the upstream kernels or the Nvidia driver, which create hordes of debs, some of which conflict with each other. I just stick them in the local repo and let apt sort'em out.

[Deb-fan]

Thanks as always Stevep. Am happy as things are, gksu/do in all it's deprecated(sec issue ridden)glory. Glad the thing is still working in Buster, though will settle on something better in time.

UPDATE:

That'd be a big, HUGE, VERY SIZEABLE HELL NO on lxqt-sudo for me. Was curious and went to install it with the -s flag = simulate. "sudo apt install lxqt-sudo -s" and this is the output.

0 upgraded, 114 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

There is of course not the slightest chance I'm installing 114 packages to get the thing. Have seen others, again which do similar but can't remember their names atm. For me the above is a deal breaker folks ...

[CwF]

Try:

Code: Select all

sudo apt install libpolkit-agent-1-0 -s

[NFT5]

Gksudo not working, hmmmm ??? Tried the pkexec and admin:// thing in recent LM and it didn't friggin work, in MINT, one of the most popular distro's around ! Soon said screw this, tracked down some archives for gksu/do and got them working as I was used to. Will get around to dorking with this topic more for now I'm happy using even deprecated methods(and packages). Until then this is still Debian gnu/Linux, this is my install and I'm the admin of it so as long as it works for me, not sure what anyone should have to say about it. Whole point of this stupid thread was to point out people have options. Think I made it clear it isn't the best practice or most approved of choice.

This pretty much sums it up for me, too.

More detail in the other thread(s) but pkexec doesn't work for everything and what I have now is a mish mash with bits from MX and Stretch and a system that doesn't, still, do quite what it did before or what I want it to do.Nevermind that consistency is now out the window. Now I have pkexec, gksu, su, su -, sudo and sudo - And this is progress? Not to mention the gdebi/QApt mess.

I'm gonna say what I said in the other thread. Wonder how many folks here are running X as root?

Not me. I'm not THAT silly. But I do want to be able to run GUI apps sometimes with privileges.

I think that people are wired differently. In my business I have around 1500 customers, most of whom are actually repeat customers. But, repeat could mean 5 years between visits. So when someone walks in the door I can recognise them and instantly associate their face with their car. But I have no hope of remembering their name. Once I've driven somewhere I have no trouble ever in getting there again, but couldn't, for the life of me, tell you what were the street names that I travelled on.

In computing my brain works the same way. I can picture the directory tree and locate a file, easily and quickly. But typing out the path is much more difficult and waaaay slower. Usually I have to open a file manager, locate the file and then open a terminal and copy type the path.

So, GUI suits me....and lots of other people like me. That doesn't mean that we're irresponsible or necessarily more prone to doing dumb things. We know exactly what we're doing and have no issue with having to enter a password as a double check when doing something that is potentially risky. I hear you, HoaS, but bad decisions can be just as effectively implemented on the command line as they can be from a GUI.

[pcalvert]

What about using su-to-root instead of gksu, like this?:

Code: Select all

su-to-root -X -c <application>


I learned about it here:
https://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=5060.0

And yes, it's in Buster (I just checked). It comes with the menu package.

Phil

[sunrat]

@Deb-fan could you please provide a TL;DR with your posts? I can't read them any more.

I also don't use gksu or even sudo, and try to avoid deprecated practices. If the developers decided to remove/replace things, I will usually go along with them. I'm not going to make a Frankendebian to enable me to continue using unmaintained packages. And certainly wouldn't tell anyone else about it if I did. What if some n00b comes along and does the same thing and it causes issues? How many sorries have you got in your sorry jar?
People who provide advice on this forum should provide responsible advice, not ways to hack around the Debian way. I don't even use containerised apps as I think that's a stupid idea and have seen a number of posts recently asking for help with issues. Not supported IMO, go talk to the app packager. I may have even installed one audio utility from a PPA once but will deny it if anyone asks!
Bottom line - if you do dumb stuff, keep it to yourself. You're free to whatever you want with your system and keep all the pieces if it breaks.

[Deb-fan]

^ Hate to break it to you but you are not the forum admin nor anyone who gets to decide who does or says what, what someone elects to share via post. If all the warnings weren't enough to make it very clear to someone that this is not an approved type of thing then they are obviously tarded anyway and will break their system in all manner of hilarious fashion without assistance from anyone needed.

Sheesh block me but forget you, if you think I give whit about what you dictate is acceptable and what's not, think again. It's a forum for adults, discussing technical matters. People who start thinking they have some right or responsibility to herd and somehow protect the children, cause they/we aren't capable of reading and comprehending for ourselves need go take a long look in the mirror (and then hopefully punch themselves in the face, lol ... ) Don't know what rule book folks like yaself draw from but been very active with gnu/Nix across many the forum for years and never got the memo or my copy of the thing. Get over yourselves ...

It's my thread, read it or not, it's my Debian install, approve of something I do on it or not. I could care less dude, shrugs.