Using Everthing as a regular user on purpose...

General discussion related to "Everything".
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Ethan
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:26 pm

Using Everthing as a regular user on purpose...

Post by Ethan »

Hello,
this is my first post and I hope I'm writing in the right section.
David, thank you for this software, it's a gem!

Now, back on topic... As I wrote in the title, I use Everything under a non-admin account. This is for security reasons, however I launch Everything as admin. The problem (already described somewhere else on here) is that items opened via Everything open admin instances of their software. So a docx opens an elevated Word, an mp3 an elevated Winamp, and so on.

My question is, are you coming up with a solution to this issue? AFAICS, this behaviour happens even when Everything is run as a service. And this is quite bothering, because the only solution so far is copying the desired item's full path to clipboard and then opening it through the preferred file manager (XYplorer in my case), which runs in a regular, non-elevated instance.

I think you could code so that upon execution Everything runs a "major" thread, which is the current one that scans the MFT record and what not, and a "minor" thread. While the major asks for admin rights (via UAC) if necessary upon startup, the minor thread inherits the privileges of the current user environment. Then, when the user opens an item in Everything window, the major thread sends the path to the minor thread, that therefore will open said item with the user permissions.

I really hope this is doable.

TIA for your response(s),
Ethan
therube
Posts: 4580
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 6:48 pm

Re: Using Everthing as a regular user on purpose...

Post by therube »

?

How do you de-elevate privileges for a child process


First thought is yes, it would be nice to not have apps running at an Admin level.

Second thought is that all these Permissions & Ownership issues are all BS!
There has not been one time that I have been helped by these "protections".
All they have ever been to me is a hindrance!
void
Developer
Posts: 15096
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Using Everthing as a regular user on purpose...

Post by void »

I am looking at using a service / client model to move the required administrative privileges out of the client.

I would like to add this before the next major release.

For now you can use folder indexing with out the need for administrative privileges.
Although this is a lot slower at indexing and may miss some folder and file updates.
Ethan
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:26 pm

Re: Using Everthing as a regular user on purpose...

Post by Ethan »

therube wrote:Second thought is that all these Permissions & Ownership issues are all BS!
There has not been one time that I have been helped by these "protections".
All they have ever been to me is a hindrance!
I respect your opinion even if I don't agree with it :mrgreen:
I was helped by user differentiation and carefully crafted ACLs more than once...
void wrote:I am looking at using a service / client model to move the required administrative privileges out of the client.

I would like to add this before the next major release.

For now you can use folder indexing with out the need for administrative privileges.
Although this is a lot slower at indexing and may miss some folder and file updates.
Thank you for your quick reply!
I'm really looking forward to see this big change. Could you disclose something about this new model, i.e. will the "service" part be a service in the Windows sense or more like just an elevated process? I ask because being Everything a portable software, it would be "unpleasant" if the new architecture would require installing permanently a service on the system.
void
Developer
Posts: 15096
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Using Everthing as a regular user on purpose...

Post by void »

Thanks for the suggestions..

This will be a Windows service that can be installed from the Everything installer or from with-in Everything.

The service will likely be installed by default with the installer.
The portable version of "Everything" will never modify the system (unless you ask it to).

You will be able to run the service manually as 'just another elevated application' for the portable version.
Ethan
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:26 pm

Re: Using Everthing as a regular user on purpose...

Post by Ethan »

Meanwhile I wrote a little workaround, http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9216
Ethan
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:26 pm

Re: Using Everthing as a regular user on purpose...

Post by Ethan »

Thank you for adding the service capability!!!
Dogtamer
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2014 6:40 pm

Re: Using Everthing as a regular user on purpose...

Post by Dogtamer »

I, too wish to express my admiration of this highly useful software. I thought I'd post my solution for using Everything-1.2.1.371 PE (I will almost always opt for portable, rather than installed, versions of utilities, even if I must first gain permission to create them myself) from my everyday standard user account when searching files/folders on the root (C:\) drive (I haven't experienced problems accessing any of the multiple other drives/partitions on this box). I simply used Brink's Seven Forums Tutorial "Windows 7: Elevated Program Shortcut - Create for Standard User" (@ http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/19 ... -user.html) to create an elevated shortcut for the daily-use account. I do this for most any program that runs a kernel-mode driver or otherwise requires elevated access. This type of elevation obviously presents the possiblity of security vulnerabilities, but on my personal machines - which no one else uses - it provides a workaround I'm comfortable with. Thanks again for creating such a versatile program!
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