Setup woes

[Derek Broughton]

Mike Leone wrote:

> Derek Broughton (news at pointerstop.ca) had this to say on 11/27/07 at
> 10:35:
>> Mike Leone wrote:
>> 
>> > Nils Kassube wrote:
>> >> Bill Vance wrote:
>> >>> Ok, I tried, "sudo ls", and got:
>> >>>
>> >>>   sudo: /etc/sudoers is mode 0740, should be 0440
>> >> 
>> >> As you can't use the sudo command any more, I think you should boot to
>> >> recovery mode now.
>> > 
>> > That's one of the reasons why I always put a password on "root", and
>> > use "su". YMMV.
>> 
>> Pretty weak.  He only got this way by doing things he shouldn't - so
>> you'd like to make it easier to do things you shouldn't...
> 
> "Shouldn't"? Using "su" is pretty standard Linux practice.

That's not what caused his problem. Simply using sudo or su doesn't mess up
the permissions on /etc/sudoers.  Somebody had to have done that ...

> And everyone 
> should have the freedom to run their system the way they like, don't you
> think?

Of course they should - I just don't think it's a good idea to advise
somebody to bypass a good security feature when they aren't doing very well
with security in the first place.  Rebooting in single-user mode after
screwing up sudoers is a _very_ small price to pay.

> You don't *have* to follow all things the Ubuntu way, if you don't want
> to.

You certainly don't, but you don't have to offer a suicidal person a rope
with a pre-made noose, either.
-- 
derek