It is a box at home that I am using. And I am still learning. I didn't take anything you said wrong. I think that is all informative and I am grateful for all feedback. I ran Bastille because I don't have a friggin' clue about so much of the security stuff and I'd rather have Bastille have it's way with my system than those dang romanians. -----Original Message----- From: tclug-list-admin at mn-linux.org [mailto:tclug-list-admin at mn-linux.org]On Behalf Of Sam MacDonald Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 10:44 PM To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org Subject: Re: [TCLUG] Bastille - Root can't login to KDE The reason "root" is not used is because 1 mistake can cause disaster, however, I would venture a guess this is a machine at home. A machine to learn Linux on and a machine that it's OK to rebuild at any time. Don't take this part wrong. However you ran a system hardening tool without having a complete understanding of the tool. With Linux it's best to read about the tool you want to use, ask questions of the group for advice, then install the tool. Don't get me wrong about this, I haven't used Bastille so I can't make more then a guess. By definition a hardened system would not allow root to use X, because root is not just an account to administer the system with. "root" is the system account (someone correct me if I'm wrong or off base) the account that runs the whole show. I have an account I created for administration of the Linux box. I also have an account that I have my 9 year old son use (get'em early). The only reason I would use "root" is to give the account I use for administration more rights/permissions. As an administrator, using good practices, I wouldn't use root for anything. I would keep the root password in a safe place and change it often. After saying that I can also say I'm guilty of using "root" for other purposes. On an isolated home systems lots of people use root because it "has the power", "root" has way to much power to be used at all. In some cases things can't be fixed when "root" is used. That's why having another administrator account is important. This same thing is true for many windows systems at home, the "administrator" account has the power, and makes it easy to add software and hardware. The difference is that "root" has much more power then "administrator". I would venture that "root" has an equivalent of "system" and "administrator" in windows rolled in to 1 account. I've only had 1 corrupt "system" account in over 9 years of windows administration. I still wonder how it happened because "system" can't be used to login. It was NT 3.50 so I'm not loosing sleep over it now. Sam. Dan Rue wrote: > Tom Wurdock wrote: > >> Hey all, >> >> I ran Bastille Linux to try and harden up my system. Now I can't >> login to KDE as root, not can I run/view certain programs. > > > Why would you want to log into KDE as root in the first place? If you > want to do rootly things, you should go to a command line and use "su" > or "sudo". "man su" or "man sudo" at the command line for more > information. > > That said, i'm sure there are ways in kde to do root things in the > control panel or whatever without actually logging in as root. > doesn't it prompt you for a password? I don't run KDE so I don't > know, but you shouldn't ever need to log in as root. > > dan > >> It is not clear to me what part of the Bastille process did this. >> Any help appreciated. >> >> TOm > > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list