Re: [LUG] Replacement for gksu

[comrade meowski <mr.meowski@xxxxxxxx>]

On 21/04/2021 16:16, Neil wrote:
> Some time ago I used to use gksu in order to make changes to a system 
> file. That was superseded by admin. Now I am trying again and I am 
> having problems. I am typing very carefully but it keeps saying it can't 
> find the file.

This sounds a lot more like a "the filepath is wrong" error and likely 
has nothing to do with gksu. I suspect user error specifically...

Rather than framing gksu for an unknown error could you describe exactly 
what you're doing and the error message?

Try not to launch GUI apps as root anyway. Proving your DE is sane it 
will escalate your privileges for you automatically with a prompt via 
policykit: a good example is launching gparted on Fedora or Ubuntu Gnome 
or KDE editions. Both will prompt for the user password - providing your 
user account has the correct privileges via group membership of 
wheel/sudo - and escalate correctly.

Don't bodge around looking for flaky alternatives to prop up broken 
behaviour either: gksu was removed for a reason.

I'm not without sympathy: not all users are confident enough to use 
terminal commands to edit files and that's fair enough. I'm imagining 
your specific usage case is that you want to edit a root-owned config 
file using a GUI text editor such as gedit or kate? If something like:

sudo vi /etc/something.conf

is a bit too daunting the 'correct' workaround is to copy the file 
elsewhere first and change the permissions so you can edit the file in 
place safely using whatever editor you prefer.

sudo cp /etc/something.conf ~/something.conf
sudo chown $USER something.conf

Now you can do what you want with the file whist leaving the original 
untouched. When the edits are made change the ownership back and move 
the file back into place:

sudo chown root ~/something.conf
sudo cp /etc/something.conf /etc/something.conf.BAK
sudo cp ~/something.conf /etc/something.conf

This has the advantage of not clobbering your original file and working 
safely on something important in a friendly environment if you don't 
like editing complex system stuff in a shell window.

Even XFCE supports GVFS so as Sebastien pointed out there is a "new" 
method to access files via a admin:///path/to/file UNC but quite frankly 
it sucks. If you're not confident enough to be bashing root configs 
about in place via a shell you shouldn't be confident enough to be 
editing any root-owned config files in place anyway. Copy them elsewhere 
first, chmod, edit, backup the original and replace. UNIX philosophy and 
it's been working fine for over 40 years - just use common sense and the 
existing tools.

Hopefully that makes sense. This is more of a "correct approach" thing 
rather than a "find me a new tool to replace the old one" question.

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