Dolphin

[vinnywright]

I must admit that I was perturbed the first time I used (K)Ubuntu and couldn't simply always login as root. But after a few hours using the system, I no longer missed doing that.

Now when I have to do something risky as root (or more likely feel I have to) I simply do one of two things both of which have the exactly same result;

I. I open a terminal session in Kubuntu and type in "sudo dolphin", do what I thought could only be done by root and exit Dolphin. No more risky behavior, or
2. I press Alt-F2 for a command line. Type "kdesudo Dolphin" and do exactly as I would in 1. above. NOTE: typing "sudo Dolphin" here will get you nothing, a few minutes thought and you will understand why.

I can setup Dolphin as root to be exactly as it is under my normal login, so it is totally familiar.

Or I can do something really risky and use either method above invoking "jedit" (or Kate). Invoking the editor as root is far more dangerous in my limited experience than invoking Dolphin as root.

I no longer have to rail about the loss of using a root account to login with. I can "root" around in the mud ( metaphorically speaking ) as much as I want.

And yes I tried "rootaccess Dolphin". I think it was 2014 or 2015. Forgot that also so please don't take those dates as gospel. The end result: I scrapped it within a few days. Using the mechanism involved was just too intrusive and required, for me anyway, more interruption than what I do now. I suppose for someone who has used the "rootaccess Dolphin" method and become accustomed to it, it is a pain to do as I do

you are obviously using an older version of Kubuntu ,,,like 16.04 not updated to far or earlier.

this is a thread on 17.10 and once you get to versions of Dolphin (KDE) over 17+ you can NOT launch it as root ,,,at all not with sudo not with kdesudo not even loged in as root ,,,,,it simply will not start that way any more.

+ as @Snowhog has stated you should NEVER launch ANY GUI as root with "sudo" always , always use "kdesudo" if you must launch a GUI as root.

VINNY

[geezer]

geezer, I note that you're talking about "login as root", which is not a wise idea. What I referenced is starting Dolphin as root, while logged into the system under my own user account. [Snowhog beat me to it here].

If you have followed this thread, there was an explanation of the changes which were made in Kubuntu to remove the ability to start Dolphin (and other apps) with root privileges. Yes, Vinny, I did understand that...

The problem is that this change interrupted a long time workflow which involved started Dolphin with root privileges for file management.

There is, supposedly, a further change coming in Dolphin which will allow us to perform an operation on a file owned by root without needing to be running as root. That change isn't here yet. It is a little cumbersome right now and I, personally, changed distros to avoid that problem, among other reasons.

Hopefully this will become just another bump in the road and we can get back to working at normal speed.

Okay - sorry about being vague about logging in a root. I'm old enough that memory is a real problem for me now - anybody else remember disliking the Beatles when they first hit the US? Or driving up to the gas pump, and buying 4 gallons of gas with a single dollar in you pocket and getting change back - 4 galleons in the cars at that time would get you around for a LOT of miles almost as much as the "economy cars now" - OK the electrics will do better on milage, but not on distance? Heck I was out of Grad School and married by then. So I was vague on purpose since my memory has lost those dates. My fourth/fifth (?) Linux installation used Red Hat and I and my friends hardly ever bothered with any user other than root . just simpler for the installation process. No bother in setting up multiple users. The computers could handle more than 1 (theoretically) but doing that with the huge available memory counted in KB not MB was not user friendly. Before Red Hat all I had was CLI.

Now 90% of what I routinely did with the CLI is in the dust bins of my memory never to see the light of day again with pulling out a couple of PAPER books and spending hours literally using the index to find the right commands and then deciding on the subtleties and implications and possible consequences.

Now I want top apologize for my hasty reply. I was using 17.04 then and kdesudo dolphi worked just fine. I upgraded to 17.10 since then and found whjat all the uproar is all about and yes they have cut me off from a LARGE portion of my directory tree. I use /usr/local/bin for the vast majority of my programs I have developed and use very often. Also /usr/local/share to hold a lot of data that I use. Just easier and less messy than repeating of that for each user. It amounts to over 300 files. Spreading that over each user is not insignificant in h/w and manpower resources.

Now I can no longer do that since the developers have cut off those directories to my use with Dolphin. Somebody mentioned Krusader . I vaguely remember using that before Dolphin (and not liking dolphin - something new and different!). Is it still available? Okay just used muon package manager and downloaded. Booted it with kdesudo and am now back in clover. :-)

Somebody mentioned they did the same with Kate?? I use Jedit - multiple platform. And I find much more powerful than Kate. Just checked. I'm okay using jedit with kdesudo so we're okay there. Maybe I should not have mentioned that if any developer is reading this.

[TWPonKubuntu]

geezer, it sounds like you solved the problem for your system, congrats.

If it works for you, then go for it.

[geezer]

Thoughts

Had some thoughts and ruminations on this problem. It seems to me that the developers are destined to failure. I switched from Krusader to Dolphin simply because the developers had made Dophin the default file manager and so was included with the distro on installation. It seems that the developers have "blacklisted" certain application(s) from (kde)sudo. On Windows they would be successful since that is a closed system. Kubuntu and KDE are not and there are multiple editors and file managers to choose from. Don' t like one, choose another. That's why I use Jedit instead of Kate. Now maybe I'll switch back to Krusader. Their efforts are futile, They will not be able to "blacklist" all such applications that people use (kde)sudo with.

Unless they use some method buried in KDE of detecting root access, they will fail. I seriously doubt that the Linux community would allow that to be part of Linux OS. They are not working on Windows. If they make the root access difficult enough in KDE to do what they think they want , the users will simply switch application and if the developers somehow ban (kde)sudo, they will lose users. At that point it will only be a matter of time until somebody forks KDE (maybe JDE?) and gets rid of their depredations or most users will simply bite the bullet and switch to Ubuntu or ... or maybe even switch to one not related to Ubuntu. There are simply too many choices and alternatives in open source and in Linux which is why the people on these forums use Linux. Altering Dolphin will not really accomplish what they think they want. When was the last time you read some advice to edit fstab or installed ssh or nfs or apcups without editing a file in /etc. I'm sure there must be other examples of reasonable uses of editors on files inaccessable without root access or what if you have to copy a file to a directory needing root access.

There are probably other valid examples of needing root access.

We simply will not be controlled by somebody else.

We Will Be Independent.

[kubicle]

Their efforts are futile, They will not be able to "blacklist" all such applications that people use (kde)sudo with..

That wasn't the intention either, dolphin and kate (kwrite) were chosen for blacklisting to lessen the attack surface (because they are the most common apps started as root), and the developers were aware that some people are just going to use other software (I, among others, mentioned this on Grässlin's blog were he announced the changes)

Unless they use some method buried in KDE of detecting root access, they will fail. I seriously doubt that the Linux community would allow that to be part of Linux OS. They are not working on Windows. If they make the root access difficult enough in KDE to do what they think they want , the users will simply switch application and if the developers somehow ban (kde)sudo, they will lose users. At that point it will only be a matter of time until somebody forks KDE (maybe JDE?) and gets rid of their depredations or most users will simply bite the bullet and switch to Ubuntu or ... or maybe even switch to one not related to Ubuntu.

This will eventually happen everywhere including ubuntu and other distributions, as wayland (the future replacement for the X server) won't allow root gui apps by design, for similar security reasons.

When was the last time you read some advice to edit fstab or installed ssh or nfs or apcups without editing a file in /etc. I'm sure there must be other examples of reasonable uses of editors on files inaccessable without root access or what if you have to copy a file to a directory needing root access.

Since KDE Frameworks 5.34, you can edit root owned files simply by opening them in kate, it will ask for authorization when you save the file, no need to start kate "as root". it's much more secure and simpler than the old way of launching kate as root. This is the end goal.

There are probably other valid examples of needing root access.

They are not taking away root access, the thing that will be removed is launching GUI apps as root...and what people really need is a simple way of performing the tasks they used to need root GUI apps for. And this has already been done with kate/kwrite. Unfortunately, similar functionality is only in the works for dolphin and not finished yet (which is why many people just use krusader, at least for the time being)

[TWPonKubuntu]

...
They are not taking away root access, the thing that will be removed is launching GUI apps as root...and what people really need is a simple way of performing the tasks they used to need root GUI apps for. And this has already been done with kate/kwrite. Unfortunately, similar functionality is only in the works for dolphin and not finished yet.

kubicle makes the point here. It is a case of non-planning (my guess here) to not make the functionality available at the same time for everything... Wait a little bit and test Dolphin again. I've no clue when the next update for Dolphin will occur, or whether it will have the new ability to request a root access password, but it is in the works.

My paranoid side says this was done to push people away from starting GUIs as root. Not good politics but it will force everyone to remove their GUI launchers which used kde/sudo root...

[jlittle]

... I use /usr/local/bin for the vast majority of my programs I have developed and use very often. Also /usr/local/share to hold a lot of data that I use. Just easier and less messy than repeating of that for each user. It amounts to over 300 files. Spreading that over each user is not insignificant in h/w and manpower resources.

Just in case it might be helpful...

Maybe you could use a group to manage that? (Users can be in several groups.)

[jlittle]

,,, no need to start kate "as root"...

IMO it's never been necessary to start kate as root. I've almost always used sudoedit when editing a file I don't have access to, a habit going back to Unix. Pain can be a stern teacher.

[kubicle]

IMO it's never been necessary to start kate as root.

Sure, I didn't actually mean that literally (I'm quite aware there are other methods of editing files)...I simply meant that it is not necessary anymore even for those who preferred to work that way (and there were a few reasons why starting as root would be preferable to sudoedit, like using kate's internal filesystem browser or open file dialog to open new files for editing, something that wouldn't work properly with kate session opened with sudoedit).

Besides, once the policykit integration is done, you can easily also perform file operations with a gui without starting a file manager as root...something sudoedit can't do (it's usefulness is/was sort of limited to editing only).

[Rog131]

Dolphin and KIO

Progress

Those who are interested of the Polkit support in KIO: https://phabricator.kde.org/T6561

With the patched KIO and the Dolphin

It looks now like this:



Things to come (2018)

KDE Schedules: https://community.kde.org/Schedules

The KIO is part of the KDE Frameworks 5.
The Dolphin is part of the KDE Applications.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Rog131; That looks usable, thanks. Let's hope it comes down the pipe soon.

[geezer]

Just in case it might be helpful...

Maybe you could use a group to manage that? (Users can be in several groups.)

Possibily - I may have to do that in the future from what I am hearing.

However, I like the less work (and time) I have to invest much better. Setting 2 directories is a lot less work and time intensive than managing the groups for the files and the users. If I have to re-install everybody (not unknown for an upgrade like from xx.04 to yy.10 or even just to xx.10, Copying over the files in backup to /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/share/myfiles setting the permissions on both directories and I'm done with that task.That as opposed to setting up the proper groups for each user.

Remainder deleted as useless meandering. Useless for everything excepting venting on my part.

[Bings]

For those that want to use a file manager and not have the security issues that the changes are meant to avoid, is using Midnight Commander an option? It runs in Konsole and seems geared up to do the kind of tasks you'd do as root in a file manager. It's in the repositories and is a very small install.

sudo apt install mc
sudo mc

I actually quite like it. My main question though is does the fact that it runs in a terminal window make it safer to use than running Dolphin as root?

[Snowhog]

Given that one cannot run Dolphin ‘as root’ now, your question is somewhat meaningless. Several members here do in fact use MC because it can do what Dolphin no longer can.

[Bings]

Aye but some people are changing to other applications like Thunar or Krusader. As the reason for this whole thing is note exclusively with Dolphin exclusively but

1. Known vulnerability in the X server when starting "any" GUI application as root (by any means)...severity of the vulnerability is debatable, but it is real.
2. For similar security reasons, Wayland (the future X server replacement) does not allow root gui applications at all...so things need to change eventually anyway.

So not only do you not fix the security problem but a change to Wayland is going to stop the launch as root of any alternative GUI app File Manager switch to now from working. This MC is easy to use, much easier for those not versed in commands. So I asked because it seems a good thing to tell people about when they come on forums complaining about the change to Dolphin.