"authorization icon" gone. How to restore?

[Paul Howarth]

Jacob (=Jouk) Jansen wrote:
> Hi all,
>    
>    when running a program from my personal(unpriviledged) gnome desktop that
> requires root permission it asks for the root-password. After that the
> program starts up and on the gnome pannel a yellow shield appears to
> indicate that the session has "temporarily" root-permission. when the icon
> is on the pannel all priveledged tasks can be started up without typing the
> password. After some time the icon disappears and to perform a priviledged
> task the password has to be retyped.
> Yesterday I tried to find out if I could manipulate the time the icons stays
> "on". I do not know what I did but I succeeded to set this time to zero :
> the icon never appears and the root-password has to typed in always.
> 
> Questions : How can I get the original behaviour back?
> 	    How can I change the timespan where you are authorized to perform
> 	       root-tasks?

"man pam_timestamp" is probably a good starting point.

Paul.