zenmap: running as root

Hilko Bengen bengen at debian.org
Wed Sep 13 11:13:06 UTC 2017


* Lukas Schwaighofer:

> zenmap ships with a zenmap-root.desktop file which uses `su-to-root` to
> gain root privileges.  This might not be a good approach as:
> * `su-to-root` is part of the menu package (not the gksu package which
>   is being recommended); the menu package is not installed on my systems
>   - we would at least need to add menu to Recommends
> * as its primary choice, `su-to-root` uses `gksu` to gain privileges,
>   which is deprecated and in the process of being removed [1]
> * apart from `gksu`, none of the tools `su-to-root` uses to gain root
>   privileges are installed on my system (except for using `su` in a
>   terminal)

* for most of zenmap's functionality, there is really no reason to run
  as root.

Just a thought: Perhaps we should patch zenmap to use pkexec when
running nmap.

Cheers,
-Hilko



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