Usability: .RUN files, terminal, and privileges

[James Laine]

Binary package hint: nautilus

Here is a usability problem for users who are new to Linux. This is about what happens for the user, when double-clicking on a file with the .RUN extension (the Sun VirtualBox 3.1.2 Linux additions on Ubuntu 9.10 in my case).

Problem 1 - Terminal auto-closes.
 The user is prompted to 'Run in Terminal', 'Display', 'Cancel', or 'Run'. If the user chooses 'Run in Terminal', but the program requires administrator privileges, the terminal window will close too quickly for the user to ready any messages which may be displayed.

Suggested resolution:
  If the default behaviour was that the terminal window did not automatically close, and required user action to close it, then novice users would be able to read any appropriate messages displayed in the terminal window.

Problem 2: Privelidges:
  The user is prompted to 'Run in Terminal', 'Display', 'Cancel', or 'Run'. If the user chooses 'Run', a new window opens and the script is run, but a message may be displayed indicating that "This Program must be run with administrator privileges. Aborting. Press Return to close this window...". In this case the user's desired action did not occur, and a novice user may not understand why, or what to do about it.

Suggested resolution:
  Expand the user's initial list of options to include something like 'Run with administrative privileges'.

Alternate Resolution(s):
  Change the initial list of options presented to the user when double-clciking a file to the following:
     'display / view', 'run', 'cancel', and 'advanced'.
  Then, have the 'advanced' button activate another dialogue with options such as the following:
     'Run with administrative privileges', 'Run in Terminal', 'Run in Terminal with administrative privileges', etc...

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Jan 9 20:35:35 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
Package: nautilus 1:2.28.1-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: nautilus
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:1420): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (gnome-settings-daemon:1420): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (nautilus:1477): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1491): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed

[James Laine (jal741)]

Addition to the "Alternate Resolution(s):" section... In the 'advanced' options, the option to 'Start a terminal session at this location'. would also be useful.

[Yazen Ghannam (yghannam-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Hello James,

Thank you for taking the time to submit this report. I can confirm this issue. It seems that this may be more of a feature request than an actual bug. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem to have been reported before so I went ahead and forwarded it upstream. Also, I'll add this to the One Hundred Paper Cuts project. Thank you.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=606798

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for sent it upstream to GNOME.

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

The scope of this bug is much too large to be considered a trivially fixable bug, and is therefore not a paper cut.

[Bruce van der Kooij (brucevdk)]

I'm sorry but if the goal is to improve usability then adding more options to a dialog (especially the ones mentioned) is in my view not the right way to go about this. Instead you should ask the distributor of VirtualBox to package their stuff.

[James Laine (jal741)]

I understand the desire to have application providers use a supported packaging method, however contacting one application provider and requesting that application provider to distribute their software by packaging it differently will only improve the use-case for this one scenario. The original feedback was intended to point out the general use-case of running script files (.RUN files in the example) from the GUI, when the script requires administrator rights to function properly. Effectively just preceding the script with sudo when running it from the terminal; but this is not a sequence that is intuitive to a novice user, especially a novice user who is comfortable in a GUI but not at the command line. For users of a current Windows OS, this is as easy as 'right-click - run as administrator'. And even experienced Windows users are novice users when they first try Linux, so why not make the OS transition process a little bit easier for more users?

[Bruce van der Kooij (brucevdk)]

@James: "Why not make the OS transition process a little bit easier for more users?"

Because I do not agree with the assumption that the changes you proposed (adding options to the dialog) will improve usability, on the contrary, I strongly believe that this will only lead to more problems, because among other things it will almost certainly tempt some users to automatically respond to the dialog with "Run with administrative privileges" even when this is not needed or not wise to do so.

If the script authors require administrator privileges then they should be the ones asking for it.

However, having read your original report once more, I would like to indicate I have no problem with (and support) the resolution you proposed to Problem 1 - Terminal auto-closes (keeping the terminal open when the user selects "Run in Terminal"). If you would be so kind to move this into an issue of its own, that would be great (file it upstream right away, not in Launchpad please).

P.S.

This doesn't have anything to do with files having the .RUN extension (extensions are irrelevant) the dialog is displayed for any file that has the executable bit set (+x).

[James Laine (jal741)]

@Bruce: "If you would be so kind to move this into an issue of its own, that would be great (file it upstream right away, not in Launchpad please)"

As this is my very fist piece of feedback for the Ubuntu Linux operating system, I am very unfamiliar with the tools and methods of managing this. Can you explain to me how to "file it upstream, not in launchpad" please? This original feedback was submitted simply by clicking on the 'help' menu, followed by 'report a problem'.

[Bruce van der Kooij (brucevdk)]

@James: Sure, no problem, I hope I haven't been too hard on you ;-)

Let me start by explaining the terminology, upstream refers to the project that actually develops the relevant application. The term comes from the idea that water and the goods it carries float downstream and benefit those who are there to receive it. In this particular case upstream refers to GNOME, as that is the project behind Nautilus, whereas Ubuntu is downstream.

The GNOME project uses Bugzilla as their issue tracker which is located at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/. So you'll have to register an account at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/createaccount.cgi and then file a report against Nautilus using https://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=nautilus. Be sure to change the severity to "enhancement" to indicate that this is not a bug report.

I'll keep track of the report as soon as it lands.

Thanks for all your effort.