Intro, and userhelper question

[Behdad Esfahbod]

I'm pretty sure I have unlocked screen save with root password
once a few months ago.  And I'm pretty sure I have not used
anything other than RH&FC.  But right now I can't do that.
Anyone knows if there have been such an option that is removed?

behdad


On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Alastair Neil wrote:

>
> Hello
>
> I am Alastair Neil, a lapsed physicist and currently unix admin for IT&E
> labs at George Mason University.  I've been using linux since late '93,
> slackware and then redhat since 96 or so.
>
> An issue we have with some of our redhat systems is co-management where
> I retain root access but create an account with admin privileges.  All
> easy enough to do with sudo. However, the desire for access to the gui
> tools, again relatively easy enough to change the authorised account for
> the tools in /etc/security/console.apps, the problem is that now I have
> to remember the ladmin account password to access the apps. I would
> rather be able to always be granted access with the root password.
>
> It seems there are two ways to approach this, allow userhelper to have a
> list of authorised users, possibly selected from a dropdown list in
> consolehelper or modify pam to check the root password if the user
> password does not match.
>
> I modified pam in RH8 to do this because I liked the ability to unlock
> screensavers with the root passwd ala HPUX, but I noted that
> xscreensaver in Ximian allows this and as far as I can see it is not a
> pam level change.
>
> Does anyone think these modifications are a good idea and if so what is
> the preference?  Or perhaps in my ignorance I am reinventing the wheel?
>
>