Is there a particular reason why you prefer this method over becomeroot? I've been lazy and have left the gainroot app sitting around, but I usually prefer either a password or password-less root access to particular commands. I've also set up sudoers to allow the 'su' command, which is handy if you want to get root access with authentication.

Having to ssh to the machine itself for root access seems a bit wasteful, although I'm a huge fan of ssh keys. I just prefer using simpler means for local access. So, I have sudo su - for password access, and although I'll likely eventually get rid of it, I have gainroot for things like running the Bluetooth PAN startup script from a menu without requiring a password.

I think they all have their uses though. I'm hoping to write a simple custom music+db sync from my home network, and I'll probably do that with ssh + keys.