Another reason to prefer a real root over sudo

[Chris G]

On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 08:32:45AM -0500, Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> Steve Lamb wrote:
> > Chris G wrote:
> 
> >> In the typical home environment a computer has only one user.
> > 
> >     Two if you have root enabled.  Unless you're going to set both passwords
> > to the same in which case you might as well use sudo.
> > 
> >     Don't get me wrong, I agree with you.  I don't think in an environment
> > where a single user will be using root there's a need for sudo.  But honestly,
> > in Ubuntu that is easy enough for you to fix.
> 
> I thought part of the good thing with sudo is that programs can't try 
> doing admin-level fubaring without prompting you. With root things do 
> what they want when they want and never prompt because the privileges 
> are already there.
> 
That's why root prompts are different, and red if you want.  Different
protection but as long as you're looking at the screen it's there.

With sudo you only enter the password once so, once in the swing,
you're quite likely to happily type "sudo <something awful>" without
thinking.

I always remove the aliasing of rm to 'rm -i' for the same reason,
after two or three times one hits 'y' automatically after rm and it
offers no real protection, just annoyance.  


-- 
Chris Green