I've lost sudo access and I don't really understand why

[Colin Watson]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 03:29:40PM +1100, Karl Auer wrote:
> On Wed, 2020-03-18 at 23:32 +0100, Ralf Mardorf via ubuntu-users wrote:
> > I enable the root account for all of my Linux, that's a quite good
> > "spare user". FWIW that some distros by default disable/d the root
> > account was never done for security reasons, this is just an urban
> > myth.
> 
> You are a respected and knowledgeable contributor to this list. You are
> experienced enough to be making decisions about your security that may
> for whatever reasons depart from the normal approaches.
> 
> That said, it's important that you keep opinion and fact distinct,
> otherwise less-experienced people on this list might mistake your
> opinions for fact.

I don't really want to get into the broader argument here.  However, one
thing I will say as a point of fact, because I was there and made the
original change in 4.10, is that Ralf is quite correct that Ubuntu's
decision to disable the root account by default was not taken for
security reasons.  Rather, the decision was taken in order to reduce the
number of questions that the installer had to ask.  People who weren't
involved in the decision later put about the idea that it was a change
we'd made to increase security, but that wasn't true.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]