SELinux

[Kostas Sfakiotakis]

On 18/01/2011 06:22 πμ, Tim wrote:

< snip >

>  SELinux is another of the protective measures on your system,

A small comment here , actually SELinux is an NSA invention which
is supposed to provide extra security to your system by controlling
everything and everyone .

>  Being root doesn't mean that you should just be allowed to do
>  anything,

Since i started this thread , let me clarify something . All i was
trying to do was to open a pdf file  simple as that  and i do believe
that on my computer am pretty much entitled to do so .

>  Made all the more worse when users start running things as root that
>  they don't really need to. Running Acrobat reader as root? Not a
>  good idea.

Well i was logged in as root at the momment . What am i supposed to do ??
Logout and login back again just to run Acrobat Reader  ????? I do
believe that would be an overkill .

>  The whole idea of running as root, in general, is bad.

No argument to that . It´s certainly more risky than login in as a 
normal user .
Well i have been doing that for quite some time and until now it has been
quite safe . Even in the worst case scenario that everything goes bad , all
i would have to do is make a clean installation . There is no big deal to
that , since my data are stored away from the system partitions .

>The concept of trying to force something that's currently not working, by
>  switching to the root user to try and run it, isn't much better.
>

Well i wasn´t trying to force anything by switching to the root user . I
wasn´t trying to force anything at all . I was just trying to open a manual
( a pdf file ) .