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Re: Package update problem...

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On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 3:17 PM, Mark Neidorff <mark@neidorff.com> wrote:
> I'm running Jesse 8.6 with a KDE desktop.
>
> I get a desktop notification that there is one or more package updates
> available.  I select the package(s) and then I'm asked for authentication. I
> type in the root password, but it is rejected.  I also try my user password,
> but that is also rejected. (Tried multiple times, so it doesn't seem to be a
> typo problem)
>
> If I go to the command line--as root--and do apt-get update and upgrade, then
> the update installs correctly.
>
> This sounds like something easy to fix, but I just don't know where to fix and
> what fix to apply. Please let me know.

The technical term you are looking for is called "Privilege escalation".

On a Debian system, "administrative" privileges are required to
install/upgrade/remove packages. When you run the command as root, you
have all the necessary privileges. A normal user does not have them
enabled by default. This explains why the commands fail unless they
are run as root. One possible approach (I am only guessing here and
have not tested this) is to grant the necessary privileges to this
user and see if the KDE application respects that.

You can do this by modifying /etc/sudoers which is explained in
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch01.en.html#_sudo_configuration
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch04.en.html#_sudo
https://debian-handbook.info/browse/stable/sect.config-misc.html#sect.sharing-admin-rights

The only caution is that /etc/sudoers can't be edited interactively in
an editor. You need to use another program called visudo to do that.

You can accomplish some really complex tasks by tweaking the sudoers
configuration file (see man sudoers for all the gory details). But for
your use case, granting ALL permissions to one normal user should
probably be sufficient.

hope that helps
raju
-- 
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi | http://raju.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Blog

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Thread

Package update problem... Mark Neidorff <mark@neidorff.com> - 2016-12-09 21:30 +0100
  Re: Package update problem... kamaraju kusumanchi <raju.mailinglists@gmail.com> - 2016-12-11 20:50 +0100
    Re: Package update problem... Mark Neidorff <mark@neidorff.com> - 2016-12-12 18:50 +0100
      Re: Package update problem... kamaraju kusumanchi <raju.mailinglists@gmail.com> - 2016-12-13 05:50 +0100
        Re: Package update problem...{***SOLVED***} Mark Neidorff <mark@neidorff.com> - 2016-12-13 20:30 +0100
          Re: Package update problem...{***SOLVED***} Henning Follmann <hfollmann@itcfollmann.com> - 2016-12-13 20:40 +0100
            Re: Package update problem...{***SOLVED***} Mark Neidorff <mark@neidorff.com> - 2016-12-13 20:50 +0100
          Re: Package update problem...{***SOLVED***} Lisi Reisz <lisi.reisz@gmail.com> - 2016-12-14 12:10 +0100
            Re: Package update problem...{***SOLVED***} Mark Neidorff <mark@neidorff.com> - 2016-12-14 17:20 +0100

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