PlanetLab Creates a More Advanced Sudo

angry tapir writes "Researchers at the PlanetLab global research network have developed a potential replacement for the widely used Unix sudo tool, called Vsys, that will offer administrators far greater control over what end users can and can't access. Vsys is similar to sudo, except it offers finer-grained access to system resources. PlanetLab created Vsys as a way to allow its researchers to access low-level network functionality so they could develop new network technologies — overlay networks, user-level file systems, virtual switches — while their experimental work remained safely isolated from other users."

Comments

Better replacement

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather use su.

Re:I don't need more.

[retchdog]

uh, yeah, that's kind of the point... vsys (ideally) won't do "more". it's not intended for users who own/admin their system.

Imitation of Solaris?

[guruevi]

Solaris (and other RBAC's) allow you to remove root and have very fine-grained controls over who does what and where even in virtual machines (containers). This problem has already been solved before many, many times so I doubt there is a need for yet another system. Even sudo itself allows for very fine grained controls.