Some questions for a newbie

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Mon Jul 28 15:27:54 CEST 2003


On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, haywiremac wrote:

> I'm unclear here. I am unfamiliar with sudo, but what is the point of
> having a root password if sudo lets you do anything you want as root
> without the password?

  Not quite what happens. First, a user must be specifically authorized to
run commands as another user (generally, root) in the sudoers file. Second,
the priviledge can be limited to one or a very few specific commands.

  For example, the ability to run 'shutdown -h now' as a user does not give
you root access to everything.

Rich

Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President

                       Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
            2404 SW 22nd Street | Troutdale, OR 97060-1247 | U.S.A.
 + 1 503-667-4517 (voice) | + 1 503-667-8863 (fax) | rshepard@appl-ecosys.com
                         http://www.appl-ecosys.com/



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