Adding Su actions to menu

[michel]

Greetings,

I come here from Mepis. One of the features I miss a lot is being able to open Dolphin and Kwrite as Su in addition to having the possibility of opening files as administrator. I understand that there is a KDE package - kde-rootactions-servicemenu - that will provide some of these SU rights. How can i install it or have another way to get the SU actions that I need?

Thanks,

Michel

[kubicle]

The rootactions servicemenu isn't available in the official repos (although you might find it in the ppas). However, the servicemenu supports dolphin's GHNS (get hot new stuff) installation.

To install the menu (from dolphin):
1. Install 'ruby' if not already installed (Dolphin requires ruby to run the installer script in the package)
2. Open Dolphin settings>Services>Download new services
3. Search for "rootactions" and install the Root Actions servicemenu
4. Dolphin will download the package and run the installer script that will install the files to correct locations (your confirmation and admin password are requested to install the "muscle" of the menu in /usr/bin/rootactions_servicemenu.pl...the .desktop files will be installed to ~/.kde/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus/)
5. You should be good to go (If you run into any problems, don't hesitate to report them here...I'm the author of the menu, so I'd gladly hear about any problems)

[michel]

Great. Thanks it works! Is there a way to edit the Dolphin menu entries?

Thanks,

Michel

[kubicle]

Is there a way to edit the Dolphin menu entries?

As a general rule, yes, but how simple/complicated such edits would be depends on what kind of modifications we are talking about.

Let me know what you would like to change and I'll provide you with tips on how it can be done (if it can be done).

[michel]

Well I was thinking about moving the root action entries to the main list instead on having to go into the root action folder to access them.

Thanks,

Michel

[kubicle]

Well I was thinking about moving the root action entries to the main list instead on having to go into the root action folder to access them.

Well...you can do that by deleting (or commenting out) the "X-KDE-Submenu" entries under the [Desktop Entry] section in the rootactions .desktop files in ~/.kde/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus ("10-rootactionsfolders.desktop" and "11-rootactionsfiles.desktop").

However, there are a couple of issues with moving the menu entries to the top level menu:
1. It adds quite a few entries to the top level menu, making it a bit cluttered.
2. It might be hard to distinguish the "root" actions from the normal "user" actions in the menu since they are similarly named. Of course you can change the names of the root actions by editing the .desktop files (for example, appending "(root)" to all the root action names).

Your call, though.

[michel]

Thank you for the information. I will use it with caution. Last question before I tag the thread as SOLVED, I know you can edit a preference file to allow for root login, is that possible with Kubuntu?

Thanks,

Michel

[Snowhog]

You 'can', but it is *highly* discouraged, as there is no reasonable reason to do so, and, doing so puts your system at a high level of risk, both from the user as well as from outside injections.