Why do all the sudo? [was Re: Software updater no longer functional]

[Liam Proven]

On 27 January 2017 at 14:15, Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> Liam, if you want to throw professional qualifications about:-
>
>     Eur Ing  CA Green  CEng MBCS CITP  BSc(Eng)  FIAP
>
> I've been using, adminstering, programming moatly on Unix and Linux
> since the 1970s.  I'm not just spouting rubbish I don't think.
>
> I too offer help here (and lots of other places).  My original comment
> wasn't an absolute "do it this way", it was just a comment.
>
> I don't quite understand why the subsequent discussion got so heated! :-)


Good for you. I started in 1988 myself.

So if you consider that the ``su'' command was in UNIX First Edition (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_(Unix) ) in 1971 (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Unix ), but ``sudo'' has been
around since 1980 ( https://www.sudo.ws/history.html )...

If it's that old, it must have filled a need.

And if it's now used  by default and ``su'' is deprecated, and has
been since the release of Mac OS X in March 2001 and the first release
of Ubuntu in 2004, hey, don't you think there must be a *reason*?

These days root has no password and can't log in, so ``su'' is no use.
You are urged to prefix commands with ``sudo'' instead. Why?

It's more typing, so logically there must be a benefit.

Others have explained that benefit to you. You've ignored it, and 37
years of OS research, and are urging people to do it 1971 style  by
abusing sudo to run a shell.

Why?


-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053