Spyke

Not a shit meme at all ! In fact, I want to convert that to ASCII art and have it as the MOTD when I sudo -i or console in as root.

22
ikiddreply
lemmy.world

You get tired of playing Simon Says when you're doing a lot of admin stuff at once.

24
programming.dev

Maybe I'm a bit ignorant, but would it make much of a difference? Whether I authenticate with my own account to get root permissions or directly with root, I still have a string of characters which I use to get root priveleges on my machine. For a single (physical) user machine, that allows me to use a separate password for root. Should be better than using the same one twice, right?

1
toynbeereply
lemmy.world

If root has a password, it's only one password; everyone who has root access knows the password, which means that anyone can share it with no accountability. If privilege escalation rights are granted instead, it's easy to see who did what, as well as to contain any kind of compromise (by revoking said rights).

Also, I think you originally referred to su but sudo allows much more granular control.

5

So, we are clearly talking about different environments here. Of course I would not have a password for root in an enterprize setting where you have a lot of different people managing one machine. But for your regular desktop computer with one user, it just complicates things needlessly without providing any benefits.

1

I want to know more. Looking past running full desktop sessions as root and inputting stupid commands when sudo su, what's the problem with having a terminal window open and escalated to root?

4

There's some time limit before having to re input it.

Inputting a password multiple times into sudo has downsides too. Larger window for attackers to do something like: add a directory to your path, which has a fake sudo in it, and capture your password.

3
psudreply
aussie.zone

I use sudo su 'cause I can type it quicker than sudo -i

3
psudreply
aussie.zone

-i asks for an interactive session

I use sudo su because running su with no options also gets you an interactive session without having to type anything but letters and a space

Both of these are for when you want a session as root which is nearly never necessary, but sometimes it's more convenient that a set of commands preceded by sudo

1
psudreply
aussie.zone

It even gets worse - I keep screen sessions open with one screen running root

Security and convenience balance, and if something has compromised my sudoer account they have root anyway

3
reddthat.com

If I ever need to switch to the root user, I usually type su, but I saw someone use sudo su - in a video, which I thought was pretty strange but maybe the video creator knew something I didn't, or it wasn't possible to simply su a few years ago.

1

sudo su -

Fun fact. There HAS been a sploit based on the brief moment you've elevated to root before backing down to another account. This should be avoided, and those using it need ridicule for social correction. It's like people who say 'emails' or 'the ask': just remind them how dumb they are and maybe they'll stop.

1
lemmy.world

I don't know if I'm the only one who ran into this but sometimes sudo just doesn't work and you have too.

0

I tend to to be working in obscure micro distros inside of docker or servers that should have been retired around the time of the dinosaurs so I am probably alone in this, just saying it can happen.

3

I've used Debian for like half a year and this happened to me once, and to my buddy once as well.

Had to su

But why would someone use sudo to invoke su is out of my understanding.

1

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