dapper sudo

[ubuntu at rio.vg]

Christofer C. Bell wrote:
> On 7/4/06, ubuntu at rio.vg <ubuntu at rio.vg> wrote:
>> Because Ubuntu insists on "use sudo for everything", "never log in as
>> root", "root doesn't even have a password to let you log in as root".
>> Most other distro's don't have this policy.  Someone coming from another
>> distro or another flavor of Unix is used to using the standard su.
>> After becoming root, the above command would work, minus the superfluous
>> sudo.
> 
> Ubuntu has no policy against using root, in fact, that's what you're
> doing when you run sudo.  It's what you're doing when you get a shell
> with sudo -s or sudo -i.  And you're completely free to set a root
> password (or set no password at all) and use the root shell as much as
> you like.
> 
> Why does locking the account out of the box make you so angry?
> 

It doesn't make me angry.  And there is a policy, just look at the
reaction on the list to anyone that suggests logging in as root.

Sudo is not a replacement for su.  I, and at least one other who has
posted to this list have found themselves completely locked out of sudo
until reboot due to clock issues.  This is Linux, rebooting is the
microsoft solution.  (And before you come back with "Well did you run
'sudo -K' and all of that, yes, it doesn't matter if your clock is moved
backwards.)

Someone ran into a problem with sudo and posted to the list, and more
than one respondent took the position that it wasn't Ubuntu's problem
and that the user didn't understand sudo.  I put forth that it most
definately _is_ an Ubuntu issue, since Ubuntu does not set a root
password during installation, and discourages anyone from setting one
later.  Since this is different from virtually every other distro and
*nix, I believe it qualifies as an Ubuntu issue.