Re: Debian 10 64bit

[Tixy <tixy@yxit.co.uk>]

On Wed, 2020-12-16 at 23:54 +0000, Brian wrote:
> On Wed 16 Dec 2020 at 16:00:08 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> 
> > On Tue 15 Dec 2020 at 19:33:53 (+0100), john doe wrote:
> > > On 12/15/2020 6:34 PM, Tixy wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 2020-12-15 at 11:36 +0100, john doe wrote:
> > > > > On 12/15/2020 10:19 AM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > 
> > > > > > The Debian Installer will configure 'sudo' for the first
> > > > > > user only if
> > > > > > you leave the root password blank. This is explained during
> > > > > > the install.
> > > > > 
> > > > > That doesn't look to be the case anymore, I just installed
> > > > > Buster with
> > > > > Mate and sudo is installed.
> > 
> > (Already refuted.)
> > 
> > > > Because sudo is a recommended package of task-desktop, which is
> > > > a
> > > > dependency of task-mate-desktop. But if you gave it a root
> > > > password
> > > > during install then it didn't add the user you created at
> > > > install time
> > > > into the 'sudo' group, so no user can use sudo.
> > 
> > Not until root configures it, (which *could* involve adding users
> > to the sudo group).
> > 
> > > > (This does make me
> > > > wonder why 'sudo' is recommended by task-desktop in the first
> > > > place.)
> > 
> > I can't answer that as I don't run any DE.
> 
> Neither do I have a DE, but we all have access to the task-desktop
> changelog:
> 
> tasksel (3.44) unstable; urgency=medium
> 
>   [ nicoo ]
>   * Team upload.
>   * Add myself as uploader.
> 
>   * task-desktop
>     - Depend on libu2f-udev. (Closes: #891472)
>     - Depend on sudo. (Closes: #773550)
> 

Hmm, so Gnome stopped needing sudo, but that caused hiccups for Gnome
users without a root password when upgrading to Jessie - because fail-
safes stopped sudo being removed and leaving the system without any
method to gain root privileges. So the fix for was to make all desktop
tasks recommend sudo, justified 'given the usefulness of this package'.
That smells to me like an expedient hack to avoid addressing more
difficult problems (but I'm not sure if I were in the same position I
wouldn't have agreed, what with no doubt more important things needing
my valuable time).

I'm guessing that old installers didn't mark sudo as manually installed
if root password wasn't given and sudo was in the list of packages to
be installed anyway (otherwise the upgrage bug wouldn't have happened
in the first place).

-- 
Tixy