"owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0" - need I worry?

[cliowa]

Hey all,
I just installed Kubuntu 8.04, moved my /home to a new partition. Everything seems to work just fine, except there is one thing: If I enter say "sudo kate ..." in the konsole, I get three Errors (where uname is my user name):

Error: "/var/tmp/kdecache-uname" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0.
Error: "/tmp/kde-uname" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0.
Error: "/tmp/ksocket-uname" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0.

What does that mean? Is this a potential problem? If so, could you help me out?

Thanks alot, best regards...Cliowa

[jankushka]

Re: "owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0" - need I worry?

the answer to your question is: no, no problems.

sudo command

is not the right way to do what you're doing, though...
you should use

kdesudo command

from the command line or from alt-f2.

uid 0 is user root uid.
uid 1000 is supposedly your own user uid.

the files you listed are needed by kde and are user dependent.

basically, by using sudo you're temporarily substituting your user with root.
that's why you get those messages...

hth

[cliowa]

Re: "owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0" - need I worry?

Hey jankushka
Thanks alot, that's a relief.

There's still one question: If I execute "kdesudo command", as you suggested, I don't have to enter my password (whereas with "sudo" I always had to). Does kdesudo give me the same rights to edit things as sudo?

Thanks again, best regards...Cliowa

[jankushka]

Re: "owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0" - need I worry?

kdesudo is a graphical frontend to sudo.
the basic functionality is therefore the same.
sudo will not ask you the password each time.
it asks you once.
then it writes a timestamp file (in /var/run/sudo/<your_user>/).
and won't ask you the password until a given timeout expires.
or you log out, or... (there's a few things that end the sudo session).
so, you should really see the same behaviour.
all of the sudo behaviour is controlled in /etc/sudoers.
you can actually have sudo really ask the password each bloody time.
i have it set up like that.

[cliowa]

Re: &quot;owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0&quot; - need I worry?

Thanks again, I wasn't aware of this particular behaviour.

you can actually have sudo really ask the password each bloody time.
i have it set up like that.

And how would you do that?

Thanks alot, best regards...Cliowa

[Nate]

Re: &quot;owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0&quot; - need I worry?

But the timeout period isn't that long....less than 5 minutes, I believe.

[jankushka]

Re: &quot;owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0&quot; - need I worry?

here's an excerpt of the man page:

timestamp_timeout
Number of minutes that can elapse before sudo will ask for a passwd again.
The default is 15. Set this to 0 to always prompt for a password.
...

so, according to the man page the default timeout is 15 minutes.

Thanks again, I wasn't aware of this particular behaviour.
And how would you do that?

you'd have to add a configuration line in /etc/sudoers that set the timeout to 0 (zero).
the line is this:

Defaults:ALL timestamp_timeout=0

the easiest way for you to do this is as follows:

sudo cp /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.orig

to backup your current sudo config file.

then copy&paste the following into a file called sudoers, say on your Desktop.
this is exactly the original sudoers file shipped with kubuntu with the new timeout line added...

# /etc/sudoers
#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
#

Defaults env_reset

# Always ask for password
Defaults:ALL timestamp_timeout=0

# Uncomment to allow members of group sudo to not need a password
# %sudo ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

notice the timeout line...

finally copy this new config file in place of the old one.

sudo cp /home/your_username/Desktop/sudoers /etc/sudoers

in case you wanted to go back to the original configuration,
you'd simply issue:

sudo cp /etc/sudoers.orig /etc/sudoers

that should be it.

cheers.