Cannot find manual for System -> Administration -> Authorizations

[Matteo Settenvini]

Hi, this is a documentation issue, and a big one as far as I'm concerned.

In the GUI which is displayed when going on System -> Administration -> Authorizations, there's no button to open a manual (the Help button), nor F1 works.

By searching directly in Yelp, I cannot find the manual of this application.

I need it to better understand the different options for the implicit authorizations in a rule.

This is a big issue for us administrators because security is based on fully understanding what you do, and we need to read the documentation in order to understand what to do; if the docs aren't there, we are forced to guess and that's not nice. :-p

So, someone should a) write a manual, if it's not already there and I can't just find it, and b) provide an "Help" button inside the application.

Thanks!
Matteo

[James Westby (james-w)]

Hi,

This is indeed the case, but this tool is being deprecated with the move
to policykit-1, so it's unlikely to be fixed.

Thanks,

James

[Brownout (brownout)]

Sorry if I abuse this bug report but I don't understand, what does it mean? Will we be able to edit security policies without resorting to manual file editing in karmic? The AuthorizationS tool used in the beta is still the old one and it doesn't handle the aforementioned transition too well (LP #421800), is there any plan to provide a non deprecated working alternative before the final release?

[MichalM (michalmach-gazeta)]

Status should be changed to Importance High and Critical, this is a major feature !

[Martin von Wittich (martin.von.wittich)]

@MichaelM: this is not at all a high or critical bug - missing documentation for an administration tool that most Ubuntu users will never encounter does not make the whole system unusable ;) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Importance

Also, as James stated, this tool is part of the old PolicyKit that is going to be replaced by a new version. I don't know if the new PolicyKit will have fully working UI when Karmic is released (I sure hope so, but time's running out), but it would be absolutely counterproductive to put any further work into a package that's going to be removed.

[daf (davydm)]

@Martin von Wittch: I beg to differ. This is quite a high bug since it precludes simple things like CPU scaling and mounting/dismounting internal drives without annoying authorisation requests. Something which makes the user curse the desktop because it's difficult (or impossible, for the layman user who is afraid of the console) because her life is made more difficult for quite arbitrary "security" settings is quite important -- most especially if that user had the ability to sort out the issue in a prior release.

This is just one of the many scissor-stabs (deeper and deadlier than a paper-cut) which is making the community start to wonder about the direction that Ubuntu is going with the release of Karmic.