Fedora 12 and unprivileged package installation

Posted Nov 21, 2009 9:57 UTC (Sat) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
In reply to: Fedora 12 and unprivileged package installation by drag
Parent article: Fedora 12 and unprivileged package installation

Prompting people for their own passwords for normal events conditions them to use weak passwords.

I think installing software is not a normal event, but an exceptional. I install software about 2-3 times per year (after the initial OS installation, when it takes some time to get every necessary software). On the other hand as far as I understand, Fedora <12 used to ask the password only once in a session, so they had a fairly good compromise between security and usability that was broken with the upgrade...

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Fedora 12 and unprivileged package installation

Posted Nov 21, 2009 12:16 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (2 responses)

Which brings up another such "exceptional" condition: adding an extra repository.

Is the typical Fedora "desktop" installation useful enough without adding such an extra repository?

Fedora 12 and unprivileged package installation

Posted Nov 22, 2009 12:19 UTC (Sun) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

Last time I've checked it wasn't useful. By the way, why does a desktop "single-user" installation has a root password at all? The recent IPhone worm showed how "useful" it is to have...

Fedora 12 and unprivileged package installation

Posted Nov 25, 2009 20:37 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

Well, if one lives in one's parents' basement, then people walking up to the machine is probably a lesser concern, yes. :-)