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Ron House
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 Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 11:42 am Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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Chris Davies wrote:
| Quote: | Ron House <rhouse@smartchat.net.au> wrote:
OTOH, I have never had a successful experience with any
of the ?buntus. [...]
sudo for admin work is a disaster [...]
I'm a debian user and find sudo invaluable. What do you dislike about it,
and what would you recommend instead?
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I didn't mean sudo the program is a disaster, I meant ?buntu's
arrangement of forcing _only_ sudo. I use sudo on debian too, on
occasion. But when I set up Ubuntu on a friend's laptop, it forgot to
put the first user into the sudo list, locked out genuine root logins,
and left the system with no viable way to get any admin work done. (That
was after it refused to use a perfectly good partition for / until it
had been deleted and Ubuntu was allowed to make it for itself.) And the
idea that every sudo-user's password is in effect a root password, well,
'nuff said!
--
Ron House
rhouse@smartchat.net.au |
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Mark Hobley
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:44 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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In comp.os.linux.setup Ron House <rhouse@smartchat.net.au> wrote:
| Quote: | I didn't mean sudo the program is a disaster, I meant ?buntu's
arrangement of forcing _only_ sudo.
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I like the Ubuntu way of doing this. The appeal of Ubuntu is that is for
general users, probably who are migrating from Microsoft Windows.
Users will always log in with more privileges than they need. It is
what they are used to doing in Microsoft Windows. Also users may be
sharing a single account, because this is what they are used to on Microsoft
Windows.
The sudo command is a good way of stopping people from screwing up the
system by logging in as root.
For an administrator, if you don't like the sudo way, it is a single
simple command to allow normal root login:
sudo passwd root
This will set the root password, and you can login as root as you
desire.
You now have the best of both worlds: The sudo way, and the traditional
root login.
Mark.
--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE. |
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Chris Davies
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:24 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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Ron House <rhouse@smartchat.net.au> wrote:
| Quote: | I didn't mean sudo the program is a disaster, I meant ?buntu's
arrangement of forcing _only_ sudo. [...] when I set up Ubuntu on a
friend's laptop, it forgot to put the first user into the sudo list,
locked out genuine root logins, and left the system with no viable
way to get any admin work done.
|
Ah, yes, I see what you mean. Not being an *buntu user I knew of the "no
root user" approach but hadn't twigged about how one would deal with that.
| Quote: | And the idea that every sudo-user's password is in effect a root
password, well, 'nuff said!
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Agreed, but that's a knock-on effect of sudo on any system, not just
*buntu. I guess that's a requirement of the "single user, single
administrator" approach that's necessary for the SOHO environment.
Thanks,
Chris |
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chris
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:25 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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Duncan Di Saudelli wrote:
| Quote: | x-posted to alt.os.linux, comp.os.linux.setup, uk.comp.os.linux
Hello
I have tried several distros over the last three years but none has worked
with both my 3Com USB wireless dongle (also tried my Bluenext dongle to no
avail)or my Nvidia dual monitor setup.
1) 3Com or Bluenext USB wi-fi recognition
2) Nvidia dual monitor recognition
3) OpenGL type performance so that I can try various 3D desktops etc.
4) I tried various scripts sent to me by a very helpful Swedish chap for
PCLOS2007 but that got horribly tricky and ended up with several reinstalls.
So - I'd like to avoid having to recompile kernels or write add-on scripts
etc.!
For info:
Nvidia card is NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
Bluenext wi-fi USB stick is Model BN-WD54G
3Com wi-fi dongle is a 3CR75 something-or-other ... not got it to hand at
the moment.
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I would recommend Mepis linux. It is based on debian and comes with a
lot drivers already installed and set-up. The nVidia driver is a breeze
to install and cofigure via the Mepis X setup utility.
I don't have specific knowledge of USB wi-fi dongles, but I know from
experience that Mepis usually 'just works' with little or no fiddling.
Mepis 8 is in beta at the moment and may work better with the dongles. |
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The Natural Philosopher
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 4:59 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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Chris Davies wrote:
| Quote: | Ron House <rhouse@smartchat.net.au> wrote:
I didn't mean sudo the program is a disaster, I meant ?buntu's
arrangement of forcing _only_ sudo. [...] when I set up Ubuntu on a
friend's laptop, it forgot to put the first user into the sudo list,
locked out genuine root logins, and left the system with no viable
way to get any admin work done.
Ah, yes, I see what you mean. Not being an *buntu user I knew of the "no
root user" approach but hadn't twigged about how one would deal with that.
And the idea that every sudo-user's password is in effect a root
password, well, 'nuff said!
Agreed, but that's a knock-on effect of sudo on any system, not just
*buntu. I guess that's a requirement of the "single user, single
administrator" approach that's necessary for the SOHO environment.
Thanks,
Chris
Can anyone explain to me why a SUDOO password is in any way safer than |
having a root password with a separate password?
Is this something to do with having a GUI admin approach? |
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Michael Black
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:14 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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On Mon, 29 Sep 2008, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
| Quote: | Chris Davies wrote:
Ron House <rhouse@smartchat.net.au> wrote:
I didn't mean sudo the program is a disaster, I meant ?buntu's arrangement
of forcing _only_ sudo. [...] when I set up Ubuntu on a
friend's laptop, it forgot to put the first user into the sudo list,
locked out genuine root logins, and left the system with no viable
way to get any admin work done.
Ah, yes, I see what you mean. Not being an *buntu user I knew of the "no
root user" approach but hadn't twigged about how one would deal with that.
And the idea that every sudo-user's password is in effect a root
password, well, 'nuff said!
Agreed, but that's a knock-on effect of sudo on any system, not just
*buntu. I guess that's a requirement of the "single user, single
administrator" approach that's necessary for the SOHO environment.
Thanks,
Chris
Can anyone explain to me why a SUDOO password is in any way safer than having
a root password with a separate password?
Is this something to do with having a GUI admin approach?
When this has come up before, one reason (and I'm not sure it's the only |
one), is that if you simply log in as root, there's no record of
who you are. But if you move from another account to root via sudo,
it gets logged. So you can see if you were the one who became root,
or someone who shouldn't.
Michael |
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Bernard Peek
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:22 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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In message <1222689591.2729.2@proxy02.news.clara.net>, The Natural
Philosopher <a@b.c> writes
| Quote: | Can anyone explain to me why a SUDOO password is in any way safer than
having a root password with a separate password?
Is this something to do with having a GUI admin approach?
If you have a separate root account it's possible to stay logged in as |
root even when doing work that doesn't require root privileges.
Of course that's still possible using sudo if you use the -i switch. I
think the main reason for adopting it was ease of use for single-user
systems.
--
Bernard Peek
London, UK. DBA, Manager, Trainer & Author. |
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The Natural Philosopher
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:29 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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Michael Black wrote:
| Quote: | On Mon, 29 Sep 2008, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Chris Davies wrote:
Ron House <rhouse@smartchat.net.au> wrote:
I didn't mean sudo the program is a disaster, I meant ?buntu's
arrangement of forcing _only_ sudo. [...] when I set up Ubuntu on a
friend's laptop, it forgot to put the first user into the sudo list,
locked out genuine root logins, and left the system with no viable
way to get any admin work done.
Ah, yes, I see what you mean. Not being an *buntu user I knew of the "no
root user" approach but hadn't twigged about how one would deal with
that.
And the idea that every sudo-user's password is in effect a root
password, well, 'nuff said!
Agreed, but that's a knock-on effect of sudo on any system, not just
*buntu. I guess that's a requirement of the "single user, single
administrator" approach that's necessary for the SOHO environment.
Thanks,
Chris
Can anyone explain to me why a SUDOO password is in any way safer than
having a root password with a separate password?
Is this something to do with having a GUI admin approach?
When this has come up before, one reason (and I'm not sure it's the only
one), is that if you simply log in as root, there's no record of
who you are. But if you move from another account to root via sudo,
it gets logged. So you can see if you were the one who became root,
or someone who shouldn't.
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That's fair enough, but doesn't make sense in a single user environment.
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John Hasler
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:52 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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Chris writes:
| Quote: | Agreed, but that's a knock-on effect of sudo on any system, not just
*buntu.
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It is possible to configure sudo to restrict each user to a different,
limited set of commands.
| Quote: | I guess that's a requirement of the "single user, single administrator"
approach that's necessary for the SOHO environment.
|
Only the first account created is automatically given sudo privileges. In
a locked-down environment where the user is not to have any root privileges
you could first create an "administrator" account for which the users would
not be given the password and then create one or more user accounts.
Ubuntu is aimed at single home users who will be doing the installation
themselves. The purpose of the sudo setup is to prevent the user from
continuing his established Windows behavior and logging in as root all the
time. An experienced Linux administrator wiil of course know how to easily
set a root password if she wants one.
--
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA |
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John Hasler
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:57 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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The Natural Philosopher writes:
| Quote: | That's fair enough, but doesn't make sense in a single user environment.
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The new user just upgrading from Windows doesn't know how to log in as root
using sudo: he only knows how to use it to run single commands. Hopefully
by the time he learns more he will know better than do misuse root.
--
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA |
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Nico Kadel-Garcia
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:03 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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Michael Black wrote:
| Quote: | On Mon, 29 Sep 2008, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Chris Davies wrote:
Ron House <rhouse@smartchat.net.au> wrote:
I didn't mean sudo the program is a disaster, I meant ?buntu's
arrangement of forcing _only_ sudo. [...] when I set up Ubuntu on a
friend's laptop, it forgot to put the first user into the sudo list,
locked out genuine root logins, and left the system with no viable
way to get any admin work done.
Ah, yes, I see what you mean. Not being an *buntu user I knew of the "no
root user" approach but hadn't twigged about how one would deal with
that.
And the idea that every sudo-user's password is in effect a root
password, well, 'nuff said!
Agreed, but that's a knock-on effect of sudo on any system, not just
*buntu. I guess that's a requirement of the "single user, single
administrator" approach that's necessary for the SOHO environment.
Thanks,
Chris
Can anyone explain to me why a SUDOO password is in any way safer than
having a root password with a separate password?
Is this something to do with having a GUI admin approach?
When this has come up before, one reason (and I'm not sure it's the only
one), is that if you simply log in as root, there's no record of
who you are. But if you move from another account to root via sudo,
it gets logged. So you can see if you were the one who became root,
or someone who shouldn't.
Michael
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Sudo can also allow non-root users to run *specific* commands, and to manage
it by usergroups, with or without requiring the user password. It's really
quite a powerful toolkit: read the manual pages for more details of aspects
that are simply unavailable to a bare 'su'.
Sudo also handles user environments, such as PATH, better. |
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Bill Marcum
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:08 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.setup.]
On 2008-09-29, The Natural Philosopher <a@b.c> wrote:
| Quote: | Can anyone explain to me why a SUDOO password is in any way safer than
having a root password with a separate password?
Is this something to do with having a GUI admin approach?
One advantage is that an intruder has to guess the username and |
password, rather than guessing the password for "root". |
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Chris Davies
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:10 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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The Natural Philosopher <a@b.c> wrote:
| Quote: | Can anyone explain to me why a SUDOO password is in any way safer than
having a root password with a separate password?
|
You can use the sudoers file to assign different bits of the overarching
root privilege to different groups of users, without any of them needing
to know the root password.
Further, sudo provides a simple audit trail so with care it's possible
to track who has done what. If you allow multiple people the option of
logging in as root you can't identify who the root user really is/was
at any moment.
| Quote: | Is this something to do with having a GUI admin approach?
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No.
Chris |
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Florian Diesch
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 3:50 pm Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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Chris Davies <chris-usenet@roaima.co.uk> wrote:
| Quote: | Ron House <rhouse@smartchat.net.au> wrote:
And the idea that every sudo-user's password is in effect a root
password, well, 'nuff said!
Agreed, but that's a knock-on effect of sudo on any system, not just
*buntu.
|
You can configure sudo to require the root password instead of the
user's password if you want that.
Florian
--
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/>
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jayjwa
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 3:36 am Post subject: Re: REQ: Distro recommendation for a newbie |
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Ron House <rhouse@smartchat.net.au> writes:
| Quote: | I didn't mean sudo the program is a disaster, I meant ?buntu's
arrangement of forcing _only_ sudo. I use sudo on debian too, on
occasion. But when I set up Ubuntu on a friend's laptop, it forgot to
put the first user into the sudo list, locked out genuine root logins,
and left the system with no viable way to get any admin work
done. (That was after it refused to use a perfectly good partition for
/ until it had been deleted and Ubuntu was allowed to make it for
itself.) And the idea that every sudo-user's password is in effect a
root password, well, 'nuff said!
|
Plus also now any place one asks for help they automatically assume
you're on Ubuntu and tell you do so stuff like 'sudo modprobe blah'.
SUdon't need to 'sudo' everything...
don'tSU dare be a 'sudo' abuser!
SUdidn't install Ubuntu?!
sudoobie - new Ubuntu user
--
Protect? [** America, The Police State **] Serve?
http://www.hermes-press.com/police_state.htm
http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/07/04/electric-shock-for-air-passengers/
Guns For TX Teachers: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7564654.stm |
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