On Tuesday 10 August 2010 03:18:05 William Hubbs wrote: > On Mon, Aug 09, 2010 at 05:30:40PM -0700, Kevin O'Gorman wrote: > > On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Bill Longman <bill.long...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On 08/09/2010 01:08 PM, Robert Bridge wrote: > > > > On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 8:09 PM, Mick <michaelkintz...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > >> There have been discussions on this list why sudo is a bad idea and > > > >> sudo > > > > > > on > > > > > > >> *any* command is an even worse idea. You might as well be running > > > > > > everything > > > > > > >> as root, right? > > > > > > > > sudo normally logs the command executed, and the account which > > > > executes it, so while not relevant for single user systems, it STILL > > > > has benefits over running as root. > > > > > > ...excepting, of course, "sudo bash -l" which means you've given away > > > the keys to the kingdom. > > > > > > I actually prefer "sudo su -" -- as long as I'm giving it away! :o) > > Afaik, there is no reason for "sudo su -" It should be either > > su - > > or, if you are using sudo, > > sudo -i
So what is the difference between "sudo -i" and "sudo su -" then? Please be precise. > The disadvantage of "su -" is that it requires the user to know the root > password. But, "sudo -i" does the same thing without requiring the user > to know the root password. You seem to have confused ideas about authentication and authorization. They are not the same thing and harder is not always better. I have 100+ machines (all distinctly different) that my team runs and sudo is on all of them. They all have a root password but no-one knows it anymore, it's tucked away nice in the safe just in case the whole team dies in a plane crash. Meanwhile, we know each user is authenticated - ssh let them in with the right key, which they managed to unlock. To run a command as root, they must re- authenticate with their password (unused till this point) and then they can do their jobs. We also know that they are authorized - this is the entire point of /etc/sudoers and it has no other purpose than authorizing users to do things what, when and where. Knowing a root password is simply a second factor of authentication. It might as well be their own password. Well-known root password opens a security can of worms anyway and you don;t want to do where that leads. So tell me again why sudo su - is inherently bad? Other than three extra keystrokes that is? And what about sudo implementations that don't support -i? -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
