OpenSuSE 11.3 software update viewer won't authenticate user

Hello, I’m a muli-boot user. I confess I use Arch Linux more than OpenSuSE. To me it’s my back-up desktop which I only update AFTER I confirm that updating to the most recent Arch versions of my installed software didn’t break anything. (if it did, I fallback to using the older version still installed on OpenSuSE)

But eventually I do update OpenSuSE. I wanted to use the “software update viewer” found under:

applications menu->system->configuration

on my E17 desktop. But unlike the “install/remove software” {found in the same menu} selecting the “software update viewer” did not result in a pop-up asking for the root password. (Note if it matters I have “targetpw” in the Defaults line of my sudoers file) It did automatically search for updates. (I think it found about 18 of them) But when I clicked to install them, it fails because the user isn’t authenticated. So I used ps -A to determine that the only process removed by closing the update viewer was actually named “gpk-update-view”… However when I tried to call it from a root shell I got:

gpk-update-view: command not found

Which, caused me to go drastic. I logged out of E17 and did an:

$ sudo startx

From which resulting desktop environment I was finally able to start a usable version of the “software update viewer” (Though I had to blow by a warning about running that application as a privileged user… Which makes me wonder, If it’s not recommended to run it as a privileged user then either it should offer a non-privileged user the chance to authenticate, OR it shouldn’t have functions that require the authority of a privileged user)

My question is since I doubt it’s wise to effectively run startx as root, how am I supposed to run the software update application???

TIA
jtwdyp

When you want the "officialy released Security/Recommended updates (from the Update repo), use YaST > Software > Online Update.

Use YaST > Software > Software management for all other (de)installations. You can see there if there are (e.g. for your Pcakman repo) newer version of software because they show in blue. You can check by repository by choosing the Repositories fron the View menu. You can then go to the list in the right panel, right click, choose All in this list … and then Update when a newer version is available, to install all newer version of a repo en masse.