configuring sudo by default

Karsten 'quaid' Wade kwade at redhat.com
Wed Sep 24 14:46:26 UTC 2008


On Sat, 2008-09-13 at 14:02 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

> But a checkbox with a text "User is the sysadmin for this system" might 
> makes sense in firstboot -- that checkbox could not only configure sudo 
> and/or PolicyKit access but also do other things like setting up a alias 
> to /etc/aliases to make sure the user in question retrieves the mail 
> send to root.

+1

From a documentation perspective, not having 'sudo' setup by default is
a major PITA.  We have these options currently in writing:

a. In each document that requires doing actions as root, have a section
that explains how to configure 'sudo'
  1. Or we have to send them out to a stand-alone Sudo How To, which can
be described as, "sucky reader experience."

b. Use 'su -c' in all situations, despite other Linux tutorials commonly
using sudo
  b.1 Why does this matter?  It's good to follow a common practice to
make readers more familiar and comfortable; tutorials can more easily be
reused or apply to Fedora.
  b.2 Also 'su' requires knowing the root password, where 'sudo'
doesn't.

The situation we have without 'sudo' configured by user-who-is-admin is
that the user must know and use the root password on a regular basis.
Super evil may ensue.  Makes writing documentation exponentially more
difficult.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, Community Gardener
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : 
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