OpenSUSE Linux Rants

Today, we’re gonna shoot for another one of those dumb little “cool openSUSE Linux tips” that allow one to get *DIRECTLY* to what it is that one needs.

As you may or may not know, openSUSE’s YaST tool has a number of modules. Well, when you open YaST, and you click on something like “Software Management”, it really just runs another command in the background, as many gui-based apps do. When you specifically click on that exact option in YaST, the command “yast2 sw_single &” is executed.

However, this must be executed as root.

Sure would be nice to put that in our quick launch bar so we can skip having to open two windows when we could just go straight to the one we want because we already know the command required to summon it.

Except that we are not logged in as privileged users. Hhmm. Is there a solution?

Apologies for the anti-climactic introduction because logic screams that if there was not a solution, I wouldn’t be writing this entry. Sorry, best I could muster this morning.

The solution is that you create a shortcut button in the panel of whatever desktop environment/windows manager you use. Add your favorite icon that means “Manage software in YaST.” As the commandline, you put in the following:

xdg-su -c "/sbin/yast2 sw_single"

Click on your shortcut button. It should prompt for the root password. Upon entering the correct password, direct access to the Software Management module is granted.