sudo and d-l (Re: Catch22)

[jpryzby+lhbzpo at quoininc.com (Justin Pryzby)]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 04:58:39PM +0200, Damian Lubosch wrote:
> Thomas H. George wrote:
> > I am trying to setup static ip addresses running either the etch or the 
> > lenny gnome iso's - the problem is the same for both.

> > I confess that I do not fully understand sudo.  I am the only one 
> > allowed to do any administrative functions on the computers of my home 
> > network so until now I have just become root for this work and a normal 
> > user for everything else.
> 
> Sudo lets a user execute commands with root's rights. If you really need
> a password for root you can simply create one. On the shell you create a
> root-shell "sudo bash" and then you can set your root-pw with "pwd". Of
              ^^^^^^^^^                                          ^^^
sudo -s and passwd

The idea is to eliminate the possibility of you leaving a root shell
opened for long periods of time, while not still requiring you to
enter a password to run su -c '...' for every single command.  It also
logs everything and avoids the need to give out the actual root pw.

Perhaps you will also have to use passwd -u to "unlock" the password,
but the implementation was never clear to me (prefix with ! or change
to !  or *) nor the difference between locking the password and
locking the account (which I guess is chage -E 1).

Justin