Comments on: That word “administrator”: I do not think it means what you think it means

By: That word “events”: It does not mean what you think it means « Jon Udell

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:34:06 +0000

[...] already riffed on that classic bit in the titles of two other items. Now I’m compelled to do it again because when I talk about events, vis-a-vis the [...]

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 08:04:20 +0000

“there are only a handful of tasks that require elevation”

I guess installing apps is the big one for me. I try a lot of stuff.

By: sean

sean — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:34:11 +0000

“On XP, you can try to implement the old Unix best practice of creating and mostly running as a standard user, reserving the root account for occasional privilege elevation. That strategy rarely works, though”

Wow. What kind of problems did you encounter? I’ve been developing on XP for at least 4 years as a standard user and there are only a handful of tasks that require elevation. I was hoping for smoother behavior in Vista, but have resorted to my XP coping mechanisms (run cmd prompt as admin) because Vista is too chatty for the standard account (two prompts per elevation?).

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 22:36:52 +0000

“On OS X, it seems to me that my role is a regular user, not an administrator.”

“I run Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution, and it uses sudo exactly as John describes.”

Right. This is relatively new though. Historically on Unix systems — and also on XP — you wound up by default as root. Demoting yourself to a regular user was a best practice, though one much less easily implemented on XP which lacks a sudo-like mechanism.

Then OS X made a distinction between superuser and administrator. Now we see that same distinction being made in Ubuntu and Vista. It’s all good, I’m just noticing that there are some different meanings of administrator in play now.

By: Kyle Mathews

Kyle Mathews — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:11:11 +0000

I run Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution, and it uses sudo exactly as John describes. Most of the time I run as a normal user with no privileges whatsoever. Only when I try to install programs or modify system files does it ask me for my password (just my normal login password) so to momentarily elevate my privileges. I like the Linux security model and find it fairly painless to use.

By: John

John — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:35:38 +0000

Interesting, particularly the point about semantic drift of the word administrator.

On OS X, it seems to me that my role is a regular user, not an administrator. I am only promopted for my password when I install software, change networking settings, and other things of similar impact. Thus I’m only occassionally asked for credentials and it makes perfect sense at those times.

If I remember correctly, this works like (or uses) the UNIX sudo program, which grants a temporary higher-level privelege to a regular user for a specific command. If this is so, I am running as a regular user, except when I install something, which runs the brief installation command as an administrator after I authorize it via password.

I can’t remember whether this is the default behavior for OS X, or I changed something since installing, but it seems like a pretty good way of doing things. Maybe someone running Linux can comment on whether they do things in a similar way.

By: TeesMyBody.com T-Shirts

TeesMyBody.com T-Shirts — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 02:25:13 +0000

I have to agree with Corporate user. It makes thing a bit easier.

Bob Hasko
http://www.TeesMyBody.com T-Shirts

By: Corporate user

Corporate user — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:17:36 +0000

I wish everyone would at least try their installers in non-Admin mode. Here at work, I’m a “Power User” and able to install software — but only for my account. You’d be surprised how many installers balk at that – they only run as Admin.

By: Preston L. Bannister

Preston L. Bannister — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:09:29 +0000

The Bitfrost page on the OLPC site serves as a good reminder to programmers (myself included) that what once made sense (in terms of security), most certainly does not make sense in the end-user market.