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Domain: sudo.ws

Stories and comments across the archive that link to sudo.ws.

Comments · 13

  1. Re:Functional by waveclaw · · Score: 2 · on The Strange Art of Writing Release Notes (ieee.org)

    While the sudo manpages get short shrift, the Sudo release notes are one of the best examples of open-source release notes.

    They are

    • published in a convenient "permanent" location
    • provided in multiple formats (direct email, mailing lists, usenet, webpages, version control strings, package logs)
    • searchable format (text)
    • ordered reverse chronologically (newest first when reading top to bottom)
    • available in common languages
    • clearly written in short, technical language
    • mentioning new features including searchable strings or examples
    • providing references, links and IDs of relevant tickets, bugs and background information

    So, for example, if you needed to do something like figure out when the includedir option was added? Google it, get that page, find the version on that page and you are done.

    Note that I use the present tense form in this. The legacy of the written word applies to Shakespeare as equally as it applied to your public Git commit messages. Or release notes. Once you publish your release notes they are always providing that information. They are providing information right now, just possibly to new people.

    And please, don't just make your release notes a compilation of your commit messages. Unless they are really really good.

  2. Re:Three cheers for selfishness! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1 · on Interviews: Stack Overflow Co-Founder Jeff Atwood Answers Your Questions

    Recalling a hint from xkcd about sudoers(5): the description of the sudoers file format starts with a "Quick guide to EBNF" and the whole manual is roughly 13,000 words long. When you want to change the password prompt timeout today, RTwholeFM before opening visudo is not an option.

  3. Re:Macs don't get viruses. by tiffany352 · · Score: 2 · on New Mac Trojan Installs Silently, No Password Required

    Sudo effectively makes the user's password the superuser's password. This totally destroys the usefulness of having a separate root user altogether. Sudo was designed for RESTRICTING the privileges commands that needed some superuser permissions needed, not for turning regular accounts into root. This page makes no mention of your idea of how sudo is used: http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/intro.html

  4. Re:What an ass by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1 · on Torvalds Calls OpenSUSE Security 'Too Intrusive'

    You don't understand sudo , and it absolutely does give fine grained control. You have been using the most simple case, but there is far, far more under the hood. Welcome to Linux!

  5. Re:I have prior work by earlymon · · Score: 1 · on Microsoft Patents Sudo's Behavior

    According to this, you're late:

    http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/history.html

  6. Re:UAC isn't a bad idea, just one taken waaay to f by dhavleak · · Score: 0 · on Microsoft Says Other OSes Should Imitate UAC
    Actually, it's closer to sudo than you might think (and even closer than previous posts might have indicated)
     

    and the rights stick around for a while so you're not constantly typing in passwords. http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/intro.html -- see the third bullet point. The sudo guys (wisely and honestly) acknowledge that this 'session' is basically a security risk for say, an unattended machine (there are other scenarios too, but this is the most obvious). They wisely left this timeout configurable so that the risk can be eliminated by setting it to zero. So UAC's lack of a 'session' isn't really a flaw - its good design.

    Of course, its not wise to ever leave a machine unattended -- you should ideally lock it anytime you aren't using it. Which is why the password prompt in sudo is IMHO not really necessary. I think that confuses two different issues: Authentication vs. Elevation of Privileges. I can easily picture a scenario in which a command line utility/installer/something in linux shows you a fake sudo prompt, the result of which is that the malicious code now has your password. Even if an application tries to mimic a UAC prompt, clicking 'allow' on that prompt does nothing since it isn't the actual UAC prompt.

    I'm sure there are scenarios I'm missing etc., but my point is just that I don't think UAC is all bad; it's just a victim of our perception that passwords are always necessary for security. I've been using Vista roughly since launch now, and I can't recall the last time I saw a UAC prompt. Basically when you setup a machine, it might take a couple of weeks before you've got everything just exactly the way you want it, and then after that UAC prompts are going to be very rare - I don't think the average user will really get conditioned to blindly hitting 'allow' each time.
  7. A Brief History of Sudo by Kadin2048 · · Score: 3, Interesting · on Microsoft Says Other OSes Should Imitate UAC
    As referenced in the manpage; available online here

    A Brief history of sudo(8):

    Sudo was first conceived and implemented by Bob Coggeshall and Cliff Spencer around 1980 at the Department of Computer Science at SUNY/Buffalo. It ran on a VAX-11/750 running 4.1BSD. An updated version, credited to Phil Betchel, Cliff Spencer, Gretchen Phillips, John LoVerso and Don Gworek, was posted to the net.sources newsgroup in December of 1985.

    In the Summer of 1986, Garth Snyder released an enhanced version of sudo. For the next 5 years, sudo was fed and watered by a handful
    of folks at CU-Boulder, including Bob Coggeshall, Bob Manchek, and Trent Hein.

    In 1991, Dave Hieb and Jeff Nieusma wrote a new version of sudo with an enhanced sudoers format under contract to a consulting firm called "The Root Group". This version was later released under the GNU public license. ...
    The original post to Usenet is available in Google's archive here, although I don't know if that URL is stable or not. But the whole thing is there, including the source, all in plaintext, dated Dec 15, 1985. From reading the discussion it looks as if some other people had similar programs earlier, though, including one called "asroot" which seems a lot less robust.
  8. My two cents on sudo by xmas2003 · · Score: 1 · on Got Root - Should You Use It?
    3 categories of admins.

    1. Admins who don't have a clue and don't know about sudo so they just login as root. However, if you tell them to use sudo, they are mallable enough that they will listen and do so.

    2. Admins who haven't been around a while, but think they know a lot, and therefore insist that sudo is OK for them for a variety of reasons. These folks often won't listen to 'ya. Dangerous!

    3. Admins who have been around for a while and insist on using sudo. If you bring 'em into a new environment, it's the first thing they will install if it doesn't exist. They realize it's a good thing and want to have everything they have done logged ... plus all the other reasons enumerated elsewhere.

    BTW, Todd Miller has graciousely maintained sudo for years - consider tossing him a few dollars to continue working on it.

  9. i'm a unix sysadmin, here's my top ten list by Khopesh · · Score: 4, Informative · on Sysadmin Toolbox Top Ten
    (in no particular order)
  10. sudo by xmas2003 · · Score: 5, Informative · on UNIX Systems Control Politics?
    sudo is a great tool to control and log root access - if the UNIX Admins aren't using this already, they should be.

    So document exactly what you REALLY need sudo access for, and *if* there is a business case justification, then they should be able to grant this on a per command basis. There should be no reason for a webmaster to "need" the root password.

  11. In other news, sudo 1.6.8 was announced today... by millert · · Score: 3, Informative · on Microsoft Patents sudo

    What an auspicious start. Maybe M$ will decide to patent some of the new features.

  12. Host-based tools ... sudo is my favorite by xmas2003 · · Score: 1 · on Missing Open Source Security Tools?

    Don't forget host-based tools - one of my favorite that will help keep you OUT of trouble is sudo which is a way of controlling and logging root access. Been around forever - tastes great AND less filling! ;-)

  13. Re:User vs Root by Khopesh · · Score: 3, Informative · on Lindows 2.0.0 Released

    Lindows "solves" the problem [of mounting samba shares] by simply having the user run as root all the time. I frankly can't see how Lindows is anything but the worst of both worlds.

    eww. there's an easier solution.
    (i hope the lindows people are reading...) use sudo. from the sudo website,
    "Sudo (superuser do) allows a system administrator to give certain users (or groups of users) the ability to run some (or all) commands as root or another user while logging the commands and arguments."

    I use sudo almost exclusively for mounting (including smbmount).
    there are ways to easily configure it so that
    it doesn't need a password to perform some (or all) actions.