Re: Admin vs Root Authorization
Re: Admin vs Root Authorization
- Subject: Re: Admin vs Root Authorization
- From: "Andy O'Meara" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 15:32:58 -0500
- Thread-topic: Admin vs Root Authorization
>
> It's tough, because if we lock down the system more, users are asked
> for a password more often, which makes the system less secure in the
> long run.
Yeah, I don't envy Apple on this one--it's a tough, tough problem to
address--the remedy is a lose/lose. Unfortunately, for windows, they're
exhibit A of how bad things can get (many apps these days require admin to
install *and* run). A very tough problem indeed, and an even tougher one to
pull out of once you're in it as I'm sure Redmond is painfully aware.
> We really depend on developers like yourself making the right
> decisions here, using 'admin' or 'root' authentication in the
> installer only when you really need it, and using the correct one of
> 'admin' vs 'root' depending on whether it's something the user should
> be strongly alerted to.
Perhaps a direction to consider for big-picture mac os authentication
changes is the fact that most pkgs only want admin access in order to copy
over their app(s) to the common Applications folder. I realize that
ideally, it's nice to have the user drag over an app from the img to
wherever they like, but in situations where you have a suite of apps, this
doesn't work as well. Our situation is that we need to copy a folder to the
user's Application Support folder, so if we were to go with the user-drag
approach, when they opened our img, they'd see three items:
App 1.app
App 2.app
App Support.pkg
Suddenly, to the novice user, there's a couple steps needed to install the
software. And those steps are perhaps written in a readme, which makes a
4th item (and requires a user to read them). Finally, in our case, our pkg
uses an "Installation Files" alongside our pkg (by popular request from
power users that refuse to use installers that require admin access that
shouldn't). Now we have:
App 1.app
App 2.app
App Support.pkg
Installation Files
Readme
So, our poor novice user may get a little overwhelmed (or annoyed) that the
installation process has become something they actively need to engage in.
So, back to my initial suggestion, a pkg getting write access to the common
apps folder (and only that access) would seem to be a useful access
level/flag to have (and the user auth prompt could reflect this lower access
level). With this, our img would now only need to contain 2 items:
Installer.pkg
Installation Files (now also contains the .apps that
are moved to the Applications folder).
And, most importantly, the pkg would not require admin auth, just the
special-access level auth that I described above.
I just came up w/ the above idea off the cuff, so if it's got
holes/problems, you need'd reply--just something to think about.
Andy
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