On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 09:38:07AM +0800, Brad Campbell wrote:
> So all that rambling comes back to "why do I need to know my root password
> to halt or reboot the machine from the login screen?"

Because half a century ago you had plenty of users per machine. Rebooting
obviously destroyed the work of everyone else, so it was something reserved
for trusted operators. I believe such defaults are no longer appropriate.

Nowadays to find a regular person who doesn't own multiple computers, you
need to go to Africa or rural India.

I'd say it's safe to assume that a person authorized to login on the console
(either text or graphical) is supposed to be at least an operator, if not
the owner, of the machine. For weird setups like a kiosk you need to
configure access anyway. All that talk about multiseat being important
or even relevant today is IMO bullshit.

If you have physical access, you can pull the cord or press reset, period.
Attempts to "secure" SysRq met with outcry and changes were reverted, it's
enabled by default again. So why not reboot/shutdown/suspend?

--
An imaginary friend squared is a real enemy.