Creation of User profiles at install (Frank Claessen)

Wed Nov 1 09:03:50 UTC 2006

 OK all,

I understand from the comments that I should have studied the SUDO concept
before commenting on it. Thanks for the humbling experience and thanks for
not flaming me.

I do see the beauty of it now, especially the possibilities of drilling down
to a command-level in the sudoers file. That is something windows can't do
as far as I know.

Thanks

Frank

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Creation of User profiles at install (Scott Balneaves)
   2. Dual LAN card installation (John Ingleby)
   3. Re: Creation of User profiles at install (David Trask)
   4. Re: Dual LAN card installation (Oliver Grawert)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 08:49:25 -0600
From: Scott Balneaves <sbalneav at legalaid.mb.ca>
Subject: Re: Creation of User profiles at install
To: edubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
Message-ID: <20061030144924.GA5004 at localdomain>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Mon, Oct 30, 2006 at 06:58:03AM -0400, frank claessen wrote:

> Edubuntu asks for one user only and that is an administrative user. 
> For security reasons I don;t think this is a good idea.

Why not?  How is this inherently less secure than a root account?

By creating an initial priveleged user, that executes commands via the sudo
command, you have better, fined grain control.  For starters, anything
issued via the sudo command is logged.  Not so for a root login.  As well,
it more directly ties admin privs to a real userid, as opposed to the
nebulous "root" account.  In addition to this, every external hacker knows
that any unix-like box has a "root" account, and so, it's frequently the
subject of brute-force password attacks.
Leaving this account disabled by default eliminates this worry.

There's an entire wiki page documenting all these reasons, at the Ubuntu
site.  You might want to check it out.

> Later on you can
> change the password for the root account while being logged an as the 
> user that was created during installation ?!?!!!!

Sure, it's still Linux, and there's nothing to stop a knowlegeble admin
who's used to the old idea of an enabled root account from simply adding the
password.  The idea here is to *ship the OS in a default secure state*.
There's nothing stopping me from creating users with empty passwords either.
Or enabling writable anonymous FTP sites.  Or installing the old rsh style
commands.  Nothing *STOPS* you from making your system *LESS* secure.
That's the admin's choice.

> Unbelievable!!

How so?

> Would like to know what others think about this. I would prefer the 
> way of the other distro's

The key phrase in your email is "..other distros...".  Other distros do it
the traditional way.  Ubuntu is doing something new, which has been proven
to be no *less* secure than the old way, and certainly, one command post
install (sudo passwd root) gets you "the old way" that you seem to like.
Seems like an easy solution to me.

Scott

--
Scott L. Balneaves | "Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
Systems Department |  To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side..."
Legal Aid Manitoba |    -- Pink Floyd "High Hopes"

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:37:34 +0000
From: John Ingleby <john at coronet.co.uk>
Subject: Dual LAN card installation
To: edubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
Message-ID: <1162233455.2257.165.camel at localhost.localdomain>
Content-Type: text/plain

Congratulations on the release of Edgy Eft! I installed it today and the
graphics are great.

Coming from K12LTSP, which uses two network cards by default, I've
always had a problem with Edubuntu's card detection because I still
don't know what exactly is meant by the "primary" interface? Does
"primary"  refer to the external WAN interface (presumably connected to
Internet) or the internal LAN interface? (presumably connected to thin
clients).

I think the wording on the installation screen could be made much
clearer. This isn't a bug in the normal sense, it all worked out after a
couple of tries, but a change in the wording would make installation
much smoother.

Thanks,

John Ingleby
************

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:04:58 -0400
From: "David Trask" <dtrask at vcsvikings.org>
Subject: Re: Creation of User profiles at install
To: "frank claessen" <frank at radulphuscollege.net>
Cc: edubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
Message-ID:
	<fc.004c57de0023d5db3b9aca008031921b.23d5dc at vcsvikings.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

frank claessen <frank at radulphuscollege.net> writes:
>Would like to know what others think about this. I would prefer the way
>of the other distro's

Ummm....in many other distro's I can log in as root from the GUI on the
first login....Ubuntu doesn't allow that.  Ubuntu is much more secure from
a "first boot" perspective.  What you do after that is up to you.

David N. Trask
Technology Teacher/Director
Vassalboro Community School
dtrask at vcsvikings.org
(207)923-3100

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:17:12 +0100
From: Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com>
Subject: Re: Dual LAN card installation
To: edubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
Message-ID: <1162282632.5196.34.camel at edubuntu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

hi,
Am Montag, den 30.10.2006, 18:37 +0000 schrieb John Ingleby:
> I think the wording on the installation screen could be made much
> clearer. This isn't a bug in the normal sense, it all worked out after a
> couple of tries, but a change in the wording would make installation
> much smoother.
the wording should probably be "external interface" instead of "primary"
and indeed thats a bug if it confuses you :) would you mind filing it so
we wont forget to fix it for feisty ? it should be against the
debian-installer package ...

ciao
	oli
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