April 9, 2009. Debian 5.0 i386 While adding myself to the scanner group using menu 'System/Administration/Users and Groups' I noticed root was also listed. So I selected it and selected the button to view its properties. Clicking the tab "user privileges" I see that root has no privileges selected. Next, I select the tab 'Advanced. Here I see that root's home directory is '/home/root'. Also.. root's default shell is '/bin/bash'. After viewing this.. and exiting by clicking 'OK', lots of things don't work anymore. 'SU' works in a user shell but after jumping into the 'root' shell the command 'nautilus --browser' doesn't work.. nautilus can't locate the non-existent directory /home/root. Synaptic won't work. gksu doesn't work. Gedit doesn't work from the root terminal prompt. They have problems with the missing home directory. The system is compromised. Ref:
Bug #198172 reported by Corinne Toure on 2008-03-03 (Activity log) Bug #198172: at https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+source/gnome-system-tools/+bug/198172 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=523180 Observe: The fix has not propagated to my Debian 5.0 Lenny gnome. So, corrected the root home directory manually back to /root via the menu. Upon re-entering the same menu 'System/Administration/Users and Groups' the home directory for root is now corrected and correctly displayed in the first panel. Going again to the properties/advanced tab for root, the menu''s logic has again filled in the home directory as /home/root. Cancelling out of the menu's advanced panel aborts saving the suggested directory. Whether it's important or not the suggested fix will not correct the root home directory back to /root if it is at /home/root when installed, right? It has to be manually corrected. .. Ok, carry on. regards, Erv Bendiks __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com.