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Re: [LUG] Doh!

 

Neil Winchurst wrote:
> I have decided to go for kubuntu and all along one of my worries has
> been the use of sudo and the fact that it keeps you in root mode for 15
> minutes. Your experience shows that I was right to worry.
>
>   
Neil,

As John said, you only get root privileges for the command you supply as
an argument to sudo.

Eg.

peter@venus:~% sudo id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)
peter@venus:~% id
uid=501(peter) gid=1000(peter)
groups=4(adm),7(lp),20(dialout),24(cdrom),25(floppy),29(audio),30(dip),44(video),46(plugdev),107(lpadmin),108(scanner),109(admin),1000(peter)

The 15 min. timeout just saves you having to enter your password every
time you run sudo. You can disable or change the timeout and limit what
commands can be run on a user by user basis by editing /etc/sudoers.

I am a big sudo fan. It saves having to remember loads of root passwords
and the prompt for your own password gives you a chance to reconsider
whether you really want to stop the network while you are sshed into the
server ;-)


Cheers,

Pete


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