Catfish file search - updating data base asking for authentication as superuser

[Moltke]

Here's another thought: Let's use synaptic as an example. Most of us open synaptic from the menu, then get a popup asking for our root pw. If, instead, we used a terminal and called it with "sudo synaptic," other than not getting the popup asking for the root pw, would it operate any differently? I doubt it. I'm guessing the same would be true with catfish asking for the root pw.

That'd be gksu working. Gksu is  a graphical frontend for sudo that allows graphical command to be run without the need to run an X terminal emulator and using su directly. It's effectively just a GTK+ skin for the superuser commands. Try this so you see for yourself; press alt+f2 which will launch app finder tool, type sudo thunar and click on run, then type gksu thunar and click on run, what did happen in both cases?