On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Mike Auty <[email protected]> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hiya William, > Sudo can be used to restrict access, so that only certain programs can > be run using it. It asks for your password rather than the user you're > trying to login to (unlike su). It also helps maintain a more accurate > audit trail (although I don't have details on exactly how it does that). > Also su I believe only allows access to people in the wheel group. > Therefore, you'll see people using them in conjunction (particularly > with systems like ubuntu that don't give you a root user), so that a > user can enter their own password and be restricted to a particular > program in this case su, and keep better audit logs all thanks to sudo. > Whilst at the same time it still gives you complete access to the > system/login shell through su (a simpler and therefore presumably easier > to secure program). So they can achieve the same results, but it is the > differences in the programs and the way they work that makes people > choose one over the other (or try and combine their best qualities).
I think William's question is specific to invocations of 'sudo su -' and that 'sudo -s' and 'sudo -i' provide similar results with 1 less exec. The security of sudo does not help here; both leave you with a root shell and 0 auditing of commands in that shell by default (unless root's shell is a audited shell; some places use them). I think the answer to William's question is 'not everyone knows about sudo -s or sudo -i.' I used Linux for years before sudo -s became normal usage for me (sudo bash and sudo su before that) and I assume a number of users are in a similar position. They found something that works so they used that to get root with their password. > That's the best of my understanding, hope it helps? > Mike 5:) > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (GNU/Linux) > > iEYEARECAAYFAkuKyisACgkQu7rWomwgFXp6KQCfRGn4b10R8onUVIXlaMgGJ/1o > gpQAn1wiKNrFzlHZLKozCgaJujSUkKH4 > =55Bj > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > >
