Skip Navigation

You're viewing a single thread.

380 comments

  • I'm a new user. How do I disable being prompted for a password every time I want change/install anything? I just want password requirement at logon and not when logged on.

    • Why would you want to disable that? It's there for a very, VERY good security reason.

    • User Account Control on Windows was no different, other than being a few decades late to the party.

      • Kind of, but to be fair UAC doesn't prompt you for the account password unless you're not an Administrator on the PC (in which case you have to enter the password of someone who is). If you're on a single user PC, you'll be an admin and it'll only be a "Yes / No" prompt.

        Now macOS on the other hand does require the password, unless you have an Apple Watch (if I heard correctly) in which you can confirm it by pressing a button on it. Or, using the fingerprint reader on the Macs with a TouchID sensor.

    • It depends on your distro but there is a NOPASSWORD option in some that you can add to a sudoers file. Without knowing your system its probably best to use your search engine of choice to look for answers to that but be warned that it is a security risk.

    • Can you tell what distro you are using?

      • Mint Cinnamon

        • The program that asks for password graphically is polkit. As far as I've searched online it only supports bypassing password prompts if you're admin on the system. It does not have a password less prompt like in Windows. I'm using this and this as source in case you want to disable it all together. I'm not a mint user my self so I cannot validate this without spinning up virtual machine. I would recommend the community just look at whatever I wrote for 24h and mention some issues that might occur. I'll update it if someone points out any issues.

          Open any terminal (sorry) and copy one line at a time into the terminal and hit enter. After the first line you'll be asked to enter the password. For the consecutive commands password will not be asked. On the last command you'll open a graphical text editor and make sure certain text is present. 

           sh
              
sudo su
mkdir -p /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/
cd /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/
touch 49-nopasswd_global.rules
xdg-open 49-nopasswd_global.rules

          You should now see a text editor appear with a file opened. Copy this and paste it in the file at the bottom. Then save, close and reboot. 

           undefined
              
/*
 *  https://lemmy.world/comment/1396602
 *  Allow members of the wheel group to execute any actions
 * without password authentication, similar to "sudo NOPASSWD:"
 */
polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) {
    if (subject.isInGroup("wheel")) {
        return polkit.Result.YES;
    }
});

          This is a security risk as you might understand, but it's your computer and you can do whatever you want. If you have any issues just post them here and maybe we'll figure something out.

    • You will want to modify the sudoers file. In a terminal sudo nano /etc/sudoers. You will want to go down to the line %wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL and comment it out by adding # in front of it. A few lines down should be a similar line # %wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL. You will want to uncomment this by deleting the # at the beginning of the line. With nano, you can save by hitting ctrl+O then hitting ENTER to confirm. Hit ctrl+X to exit nano.

      Link to sudoers man page

      • Thanks, I tried that before and I think it only worked until I re-logged (?). I'll try that again, this time will use something else than vi editor to be sure.

        • vi is definitely different being a modal editor. If you are new to Linux, I would suggest nano. It is much easier to understand, even if it isnt as fast as vi can be. Many distros have it installed, and pretty much all of them should have it in their repos.

380 comments