Re: [smartmontools-support] [smartmontools-devel] Several questions regarding smartctl

[Alexander S. <ash...@gm...>]

On Mon, 8 Sep 2008 14:33:52 +0100
"John Tapsell" <joh...@gm...> wrote:

> Out of interest, how are you dealing with that smartctl needs to be
> run as root?  gtkmm runs as non-root right?  Do you have a setuid
> wrapper or something?
> 
> John

Yes, that's a bit of a problem. It's not that gtkmm runs as non-root,
it's just that a typical Linux desktop launches programs (say, when
clicking on icons) as current user.

So far, I have freedesktop.org's .desktop files which have the
"must run as root" entries in them. When a user clicks on
icon (or whatever), the desktop environment asks for root password
before proceeding. AFAIK, this is supported by gnome, kde and xfce.
For other environments, any of sux, kdesu, gnomesu or similar programs
may be used.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the best solution I have encountered
so far. I haven't researched the new linux "limited root-style" capabilities
yet, but if they are even applicable in this situation, they must be
implemented in smartctl, not in its GUI wrapper.

For other, non-unix platforms - sorry, no ideas yet.

Thanks,
Alexander