Not sure if I mentioned this before, but when you're working on Windows,
I'm sure you know that it's safer to be logged in with the lowest privileges
possible (same on Unix, of course, but then everybody does that already,
right?). Problem is, our good friend Bill didn't provide a 'su' command for
us to gain admin privs when we need them. Therefore a lot of people still
do everything as root (Administrator) so they don't have to logout/login
each time they want to install software. Even though XP provides the 'switch
user' option that's not ideal either; since it saves both user's states,
an underpowered machine (like my old laptop) can be dog-slow using that
method. Using Cygwin, you can setup sshd as a service, and ssh -l
Administrator localhost, but that won't get you GUI access to any
programs for some reason I haven't bothered to investigate. And in the
Windows world, almost everything is done using point-and-drool.
So anyway, here's my best workaround to date, for w2k and xp, and maybe even NT: start -> run -> \cygwin\bin\administer.bat. It will leave you with a "root shell" from which you can launch any program as Administrator. Of course, you don't really need the batch file, but I can never figure out the arcane syntax of "runas".
last updated 2013-01-10 20:37:06. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com