QtSu (c)K.D.Hedger 2013-2024
[email protected]

QtSu - what is it?

A simple GUI written in Qt5/6 that allows you to run a program as root.

Although there are other programs of theis type most if not all rely on polkit or have a large number of dependencies, apps like ktsuss which this app was inspired by ( avaiable here:http://ktsuss.googlecode.com/files/ktsuss-2.tar.gz ), some like ktsuss seem to have been abandoned ( last commit was 2011 ).

Also it seems that whenever polkit ( which is a nightmare! ) is updated these programs break, so this is the result there are few dependencies a reasonable recent gtk and glib and thats it.

QtSu


Installation

If your distro splits dev files ( eg debian ) you will need to install them, so for eg Ubuntu:
sudo apt install git
sudo apt install automake autoconf
sudo apt install build-essential
sudo apt install pkg-config
sudo apt install qt6-base-dev
sudo apt install libglib2.0-dev

This is an example from a fresh install, you may already have some of these installed.
Package names may vary from distro to distro ( Arch I beleieve uses -devel rather than -dev ).

Just run ./autogen.sh from this folder then make and sudo make install.
QtSu will use the default Qt version installed ( 5.x or 6.x, version 6.x will be prefered ).
To install to ( say ) /usr instead of the default /usr/local, add --prefix=/usr, --enable-links will as it says make links from ktsuss and gtksu to qtsu so that some programs that hard code the files think that ktsuss is being used ( spacefm ), default is to enable links.
The gtksu link is legacy and will be removed.

If your distro disables the root account ( I'm looking at you Ubuntu! ) you may have to set a root password like so:
Open a Terminal and type:
sudo passwd root

Enter a new password for root twice you may also have to run these two commands as root:

pwconv
grpconv

You can now type roots password in to the QtSu gui and run commands as root.

Usage:

QtSu [OPTION] [--]
Run a command as another user
-u, --user USER Runs the command as the given user
-m, --message MESG Change default message in ktsuss window

Simple usage:
qtsu terminal.

If you need to add options use -- like so:
qtsu -u root -- kkterminal --hold -e ls -AF /

This programme has the potential to hose your system if used unwisely, BE WARNED!
May present a security risk so use at your own risk.

Bugs etc to the above email address.