sudo: what is the point?

[Neil Woolford]

At 16:19 27/11/04, Eric Dunbar wrote:
>You should only have to access the CLUI if
>you're doing things that the majority of users don't need.

And therefore it should be possible to use the users/groups gui
interface to:

>1. allow a full admin to set a user flag, "Allow user to administer
>computer" (i.e. add user to sudoers with ALL=(ALL) ALL; Mac OS X uses
>this);

Yes, I was very surprised to be needing to edit /etc/sudoers to achieve this.
Visudo works well but is hardly friendly.


>3. (idea) have a (GUI-based) option to allow a pseudo-admin to create
>users with equal and/or lesser priviledges (and, you could even limit
>the accounts said user could create to lesser privs only for e.g., and
>perhaps even to force such accounts to expire after a set period).
>This would allow an admin to delegate user-creation to users who are
>otherwise computer ignoramuses (e.g. department heads, secretaries,
>designated departmental individuals, etc.), without sacrificing
>security/system stability in the process. And, this process would
>allow some users to create temporary accounts for visitors which
>automagically disppear after a specified period, and, thus don't end
>up cluttering up the system.

Yes, that then gives some 'granularity' to privileges, matching them to the
user.  It's all there in the underlying OS, just hard to get at for now.

I too would like to see such things added to an 'advanced' section of the
users/groups gui.

Neil



>(& please, can we keep the Linux chauvinism to a minimum. Just because
>something is implemented in OS X (a *nix-like, mixed-OSS/proprietary
>OS) or  Windows (non-*nix) doesn't mean that it couldn't improve the
>Linux/Ubuntu computing experience)

True.  Though I do sometimes wonder at apparent attempts to clone the 
experience
of using major existing programs;  easy for people transferring between 
systems, but
not really moving anyone forward.


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