Re: ntdll: add a warning about running wine as root (resend)

[James Mckenzie]

Michael Stefaniuc  wrote:
> Sent: Feb 9, 2009 7:39 AM
> To: James Mckenzie 
> Cc: [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: ntdll: add a warning about running wine as root (resend)
> > sudo rm -rf .wine
>
> Solution is sudo chmod -R $username.$groupname .wine

Correct.  However, this is not the solution given on Wine Users.
> > User now upset because everything they did is gone.
>
> Not if you do it right.

I agree, but some users are very sensitive and are worse that a colicy baby.

The problem is that we should not need to direct users to run as root to perform any function.  Some Linux distributions restrict network functions, such as ICMP, to only root.  This is sillines in my opinion and actually employs poor security practices.

However, a new  that receives a message like the following "You must be an Administrator to run this program" when attempting to run a program in Wine will think "Administrator == root" and try to run the program as root.  The program does not run, and they are futher frustrated.

Also, some new users think, incorrectly, that running Wine as root will give them more permissions.  It does not and should not.  Again, the warning should address this.

What I don't want to see, and I agree with AJ, is the disablement of running Wine as the root user.  There are situations where this is necessary.

A short notification message is all that is necessary and Austin's change does exactly that.

James McKenzie