[PLUG] Thursday PLUG: Russell's Excellent High Altitude Balloon Adventure
Portland Linux/Unix Group General Meeting Announcement Who: Russell Senior What: Russell's Excellent High Altitude Balloon Adventure Where: https://meet.jit.si/pdxlinux When: Thursday, October 7th, 2021 at 7pm Why: The pursuit of technology freedom Russell volunteers with the Portland State Aerospace Society's (PSAS) OreSat program as an Industry Advisor. PSAS is a rocket club at Portland State University. The OreSat program works towards having small interactive satellites put into orbit by friendly launch services. OreSat currently consists of three small satellites based on a common design, the first one is due to launch in January. Russell's role is to help out with a system called dxwifi, a long distance S-band communication link. The goal is for ground-based student groups around the state to receive live video broadcast from orbit as the satellite passes overhead. Earlier this year, a high school student applied and got our satellite a ride on a high altitude balloon through a NASA program. One of the goals was to capture wifi data being transmitted by the payload. Because of the distances involved, this requires aiming a directional antenna at the balloon. This talk will tell the story of how Russell waded his way towards a solution using math, some hand tools, open-source software and some ingenuity. About Russell: Russell has been a Linux user since 1992. He worked for a few decades doing data management, programming, and analysis for a small scientific consulting firm. Since 2005 he has been deeply involved in the Personal Telco Project and trying to bring about telecommunications policy in the users interests, while also hacking on router firmware. Since 2018, he's been involved in an effort to bring at-cost fiber infrastructure to the Portland metro area, Municipal Broadband PDX. PLUG is open to everyone and does not tolerate abusive behavior on its mailing lists or at its meetings. PLUG Page with information about all PLUG events: http://pdxlinux.org/ Follow PLUG on Twitter: http://twitter.com/pdxlinux Michael Dexter PLUG Volunteer
Re: [PLUG] visudo for ubuntu ... pico? nano? joe?
$ echo "export EDITOR=ed" >> ~/.bashrc $ echo -e "alias edsudo=\"visudo\"" >> ~/.bashrc restart your shell, and experience everything a line editor has to offer. $ edsudo Could also set the alias to nanosudo or joesudo. Or just edit directly with nano if you are confident that you never make mistakes. -Ben Sent from ProtonMail mobile Original Message On Oct 4, 2021, 1:12 AM, Keith Lofstrom wrote: > I am learning about Ubuntu sysadmin, and why I should use > visudo instead of logging in as root user to use vi. > This assumes that Eve hasn't inserted a malware version > of visudo into my path ... > > Except - on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, visudo calls the "nano" > text editor, and on 20.04 LTS it calls the "joe" text > editor. So WHY still call it visudo? > > Anyway, I will use vi (aka vim) until they pry my keyboard > out of my cold dead fingers. I change editors as often as > I change lungs. > > Other helpful guest sysadmins may prefer this shifting > editor nonsense, so I plan to leave /usr/bin/visudo as-is > and create a /usr/local/sbin/vvisudo shell script > containing "sudo EDITOR=vim visudo" ... > > ... and add Yet Another Postit with how to exit nano > or joe, or whatever editor they eventually choose for > 22.04 LTS, in case I forget the extra v for vvisudo. > > Keith > > P.S. Ctl-x for nano, Ctl-k for joe. I think ... > > P.P.S. vi turns fifty in 2026. I've used it since it > was beta. Others change editors more often than they > change their underwear. > > -- > Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com
Re: [PLUG] visudo for ubuntu ... pico? nano? joe?
or as my .bashrc says: # I want VI not whatever crap they installed export EDITOR='/usr/bin/vim' export VISUAL='/usr/bin/gvim' --- Michael Rasmussen, Portland Oregon Be Appropriate && Follow Your Curiosity On 2021-10-04 01:12, Keith Lofstrom wrote: I am learning about Ubuntu sysadmin, and why I should use visudo instead of logging in as root user to use vi. This assumes that Eve hasn't inserted a malware version of visudo into my path ... Except - on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, visudo calls the "nano" text editor, and on 20.04 LTS it calls the "joe" text editor. So WHY still call it visudo? Anyway, I will use vi (aka vim) until they pry my keyboard out of my cold dead fingers. I change editors as often as I change lungs. Other helpful guest sysadmins may prefer this shifting editor nonsense, so I plan to leave /usr/bin/visudo as-is and create a /usr/local/sbin/vvisudo shell script containing "sudo EDITOR=vim visudo" ... ... and add Yet Another Postit with how to exit nano or joe, or whatever editor they eventually choose for 22.04 LTS, in case I forget the extra v for vvisudo. Keith P.S. Ctl-x for nano, Ctl-k for joe. I think ... P.P.S. vi turns fifty in 2026. I've used it since it was beta. Others change editors more often than they change their underwear.
Re: [PLUG] visudo for ubuntu ... pico? nano? joe?
On Mon, Oct 4, 2021, at 1:12 AM, Keith Lofstrom wrote: > I am learning about Ubuntu sysadmin, and why I should use > visudo instead of logging in as root user to use vi. > This assumes that Eve hasn't inserted a malware version > of visudo into my path ... > > Except - on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, visudo calls the "nano" > text editor, and on 20.04 LTS it calls the "joe" text > editor. So WHY still call it visudo? > > Anyway, I will use vi (aka vim) until they pry my keyboard > out of my cold dead fingers. I change editors as often as > I change lungs. > > Other helpful guest sysadmins may prefer this shifting > editor nonsense, so I plan to leave /usr/bin/visudo as-is > and create a /usr/local/sbin/vvisudo shell script > containing "sudo EDITOR=vim visudo" ... > > ... and add Yet Another Postit with how to exit nano > or joe, or whatever editor they eventually choose for > 22.04 LTS, in case I forget the extra v for vvisudo. > > Keith > > P.S. Ctl-x for nano, Ctl-k for joe. I think ... > > P.P.S. vi turns fifty in 2026. I've used it since it > was beta. Others change editors more often than they > change their underwear. > > -- > Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com Why use visudo, because are you sure that the syntax was NOPASSWD=ALL or was it NOPASSWD:ALL. visudo is just a sudoers linter that uses you EDITORS settings to pick an editor. If you have your systems set right it could be nano, joe, vi, emacs, ed for all it cares it's job doesn't come till after you're done and save and exit, it's basically the last sanity check before you inadvertently lock yourself out of sudo in a way that if you're admining boxes as a team not everyone needs to have access to the root password which is orders of magnitude more dangerous than just making sure you didn't flub your sudoers up just on the off chance that eve got access to your system with elevated privileges and decided to replace visudo instead of just doing something easier that wouldn't get noticed by a system integrity monitor. You can always just edit the sudoers file in like /tmp with vi and so visudo -c -f /tmp/sudoers then when it checks out move it to where it belongs, that's sorta how it does its thing anyway, it's also the easiest way to manage a split sudoers file using like /etc/sudoers.d which is how I generally manage sudoers across my fleet so I can have it in my config management systems and easily identify why parts of the sudoers file was added using like $ticket.conf
Re: [PLUG] visudo for ubuntu ... pico? nano? joe?
Iirc, nano is the default editor. Pretty sure you can change it with update-alternatives to the editor of your choice. I have only used visudo to edit the /etc/sudoers file. For editing most other files, sudo emacs or sudo vi or sudo ed should work just fine. man visudo summaries itself as "visudo — edit the sudoers file" See also "man update-alternatives" On Mon, Oct 4, 2021 at 1:17 AM Keith Lofstrom wrote: > > I am learning about Ubuntu sysadmin, and why I should use > visudo instead of logging in as root user to use vi. > This assumes that Eve hasn't inserted a malware version > of visudo into my path ... > > Except - on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, visudo calls the "nano" > text editor, and on 20.04 LTS it calls the "joe" text > editor. So WHY still call it visudo? > > Anyway, I will use vi (aka vim) until they pry my keyboard > out of my cold dead fingers. I change editors as often as > I change lungs. > > Other helpful guest sysadmins may prefer this shifting > editor nonsense, so I plan to leave /usr/bin/visudo as-is > and create a /usr/local/sbin/vvisudo shell script > containing "sudo EDITOR=vim visudo" ... > > ... and add Yet Another Postit with how to exit nano > or joe, or whatever editor they eventually choose for > 22.04 LTS, in case I forget the extra v for vvisudo. > > Keith > > P.S. Ctl-x for nano, Ctl-k for joe. I think ... > > P.P.S. vi turns fifty in 2026. I've used it since it > was beta. Others change editors more often than they > change their underwear. > > -- > Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com
[PLUG] visudo for ubuntu ... pico? nano? joe?
I am learning about Ubuntu sysadmin, and why I should use visudo instead of logging in as root user to use vi. This assumes that Eve hasn't inserted a malware version of visudo into my path ... Except - on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, visudo calls the "nano" text editor, and on 20.04 LTS it calls the "joe" text editor. So WHY still call it visudo? Anyway, I will use vi (aka vim) until they pry my keyboard out of my cold dead fingers. I change editors as often as I change lungs. Other helpful guest sysadmins may prefer this shifting editor nonsense, so I plan to leave /usr/bin/visudo as-is and create a /usr/local/sbin/vvisudo shell script containing "sudo EDITOR=vim visudo" ... ... and add Yet Another Postit with how to exit nano or joe, or whatever editor they eventually choose for 22.04 LTS, in case I forget the extra v for vvisudo. Keith P.S. Ctl-x for nano, Ctl-k for joe. I think ... P.P.S. vi turns fifty in 2026. I've used it since it was beta. Others change editors more often than they change their underwear. -- Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com
