[pkg-wpa-devel] Bug#816215: more info

[Dima Kogan]

Stefan Lippers-Hollmann <s.l-h at gmx.de> writes:

> On 2016-03-12, Dima Kogan wrote:
>> 
>> It is reasonable to run applications that configure the network as root,
>> and many people do that. Prior to the recent changes to X, "sudo
>> wpa_gui" worked just fine, so I imagine that this particular bug is
>
> And it still does work for me, using just sudo, but I still strongly
> recommend not running wpa_gui, or rather any X11 application, as root.
> If this can't be avoided, I'd suggest to use potential desktop 
> environment specific X.org helpers instead of sudo, but sudo is still
> an option.

Hi. Thank you very much for the reply. That's all useful.


> From what I see in the screenshot of the original reporter, the problem
> seems to be more generic in terms of starting a complex X11/ qt program
> under another uid, rather than a bug in wpa_gui itself - but as long as
> I can't reproduce it myself, I depend on further information.

Yes. This is certainly a general issue with qt/different uid:

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1185893

I don't understand it enough to theorize why you can't see the failure.
In any case, I don't think it makes sense to make any code changes to
wpa_gui specifically, since it just uses QT to do its work. But since I
suspect "sudo wpa_gui" is something people do despite it being "wrong",
it'd be good to talk about the issue and workarounds in
/usr/share/doc/wpa_gui/...

Thanks