[vox-tech] User with root privileges

[David Margolis]

On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:

>
> ps- i will state again: the thing that you said is not a bad idea is
> STILL not accurate.  UID != GID.  you say it will "largely have the
> desired effect".
>
> i don't know about you, but when i'm administrating my system, i want to
> have THE desired effect.  not largely the desired effect!
>

Well I have to admit I made an assumption about something that I've never
tried before.

I use sudo to get the exact desired effect I'm looking for which is this:
I put user davem (me) in /etc/sudoers and I say _davem can run these
six normally root only programs on this box_.  These include ifconfig and
some other things I use alot and don't want to have to login as root with
my very annoying to type (which is a good thing) root password.

Somebody mentioned putting a user in the root group and I made the
assumption that would allow non-root users to _execute_ certain files on
the system (achieving a similar affect to what I do with sudo).

Well I just went into /sbin and did and ls -l * to see if I knew what I
was talking about, and I didn't.  Most of the executables in there
(including the ones I would want to use) are owned by the group _bin_, so
I was way off base anyway.

So for all it's worth, you told me so.

I still maintain that sudo is the best way to do the sort of thing
described in the original e-mail, but I'm not 100% sure that's available
for Solaris.  I also maintain that making anybody but root uid=0 is a
hack.  If it's a clever hack that works, then by all means go for it.