Mandrake (at least version 8.x) is a little hard to deal with in the fact that some functions will differ depending on the security level you chose during your install. If you chose a high or paranoid security setting, permissions are one of the things that will be more restrictive. (You can modify/alter the security setting in Mandrake Control Center.)
Strange, though: I've got my Mandrake 8.0 system set to "high" security, but when I fire up the MD Control Center as a non-root user it still opens, but just asks me for the root password first. The Software manager comes right up without even prompting for root's PW.
You should check/change the permissions for both programs; here's how mine are set by default:
Code:
[root@penguinbox~]# ls -l /usr/X11R6/bin/DrakConf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 Oct 6 2001 /usr/X11R6/bin/DrakConf ->
../../../usr/bin/consolehelper*
[root@penguinbox~]# ls -l /usr/bin/rpmdrake
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Oct 6 2001 /usr/bin/rpmdrake -> ../../usr/bin/consolehelper*
[root@penguinbox~]# ls -l /usr/bin/consolehelper
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 20176 Apr 10 2001 /usr/bin/consolehelper*
AS you can see, both rpmdrake (Software Manager) and DrakConf (Control Center) are links to a beast called consolehelper; check perms on all three files.
