[Mageia-discuss] A possible risk ?

Wed Feb 8 13:50:46 CET 2012

Am 08.02.2012 13:35, schrieb Michael Scherer:
+> Le mercredi 08 février 2012 à 08:47 -0300, Renaud (Ron) Olgiati a
+> écrit :
+>> On Wednesday 08 Feb 2012 08:37 my mailbox was graced by a message from Claire 
+>> Robinson who wrote:
+>>>> I ended up installing Mageia 1 on his box, but I wonder why does the
+>>>> distribution allow the user to potentially hose his system, when it
+>>>> requires the root password to install a prog ?
+>>>> Would it not make more sense to ask for the root password for the updates?
+>>> It is configurable in MCC. You can find it under Security => Configure 
+>>> authentication for Mageia Tools.
+>>> Just select root for Update.
+>> Brilliant, thanks.
+>>
+>> But would it not make more sense to have the default changed to root ?
+> That totally miss the point, which is that a upgrade hosed the system.
+> Would requiring the root password have changed that ? I doubt. 
+>
+> However, if the user cannot do upgrade without asking to someone else
+> ( because that's the whole point of having 2 different passwords, else,
+> that's just a nuisance that will confuse most people ), then he will
+> likely miss security and bugfixes updates, and that's problematic. 
+>
+> And I truly doubt that having a separate person ( ie, asking to someone
+> else who has the root password ) would have avoid any issues due to
+> upgrade. I am pretty sure that both of us would have also updated the
+> computer. 
+>
+> The risk is the lack of QA, and I have been repeating this since a long
+> time. If people cannot trust updates, they will use them, and they face
+> issues and security problems, and that will tarnish our reputation,
+> among others.
+Well, you also miss the point if the cause for this breakage (maybe some packages
+that are currently missing/only available in an older version compared to Mandriva)
+is not reported, we can't really fix it, no?
+
+So just telling: "An upgrade from Mandriva broke my machine" will do no good at
+all,
+IMHO.
+