OalSkuul wrote:

Admin, please delete.

That is very selfish behaviour, threads on these boards are supposed to be a community resource. If you're upset because I accused you of hijacking the other thread then stop being such a baby and grow some thicker skin.

--crickets chirp--

Admin, please delete.

That is very selfish behaviour, threads on these boards are supposed to be a community resource. If you're upset because I accused you of hijacking the other thread then stop being such a baby and grow some thicker skin.

the sudo line failed (it opened, but after entering my password and hitting enter, the terminal window crashes)

That's strange, I'm using that .desktop file in SharpBang and it works in my tests.

What happens if you try to run the Exec line from an open terminal (as your normal user)?

x-terminal-emulator -e sudo -i

if I could just figure out the code for a desktop root terminal launcher

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Root Terminal
Comment=Run terminal emulator as root
Type=Application
Exec=x-terminal-emulator -e sudo -i
Categories=System;TerminalEmulator;

EDIT: if you don't have sudo installed then use Exec=x-terminal-emulator -e su - instead.

Disclaimer . . . I have mostly used that instance of beowulf to theme for chimaera so not given it hard daily use.

not edit it with either mousepad or geany

Neither mousepad nor geany support the GVFS admin backend. Try gedit instead, that does support it.

Or even better set your chosen editor as $SUDO_EDITOR and create a Thunar custom option to edit system files with the sudoedit command. See http://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=24244#p24244 for more on this.

EDIT:

Your way runs entire GUIs as root, which exposes your system to major vulnerabilities unnecessarily.

I blame GNU/Linux application developers finally taking security in the desktop seriously. Overriding that improvement is silly (IMO).

Tried this ("new") Thunar Custom Action from an Ubuntu forum, no joy...

Name: Open as admin
Command: thunar admin://%f
File pattern: *

The GVFS admin backend is indeed the "correct" way to use Thunar as root (ie, how the developers of the application intend it to be used).

Do you have the gvfs-backends package installed? Does entering admin:/// into the navigation bar in Thunar work? Start Thunar from a terminal to see any relevant error messages if it fails:

thunar admin:///

You also need a graphical authentication agent running for polkit to display a password prompt:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Po … ion_agents