[ale] Losing Ubuntu

Damon L. Chesser damon at damtek.com
Sun Aug 15 14:12:28 EDT 2010


On Sun, 2010-08-15 at 13:51 -0400, Damon L. Chesser wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-08-15 at 13:04 -0400, Joshua Roberts wrote:
> > ah I had forgotten about the su command.  I guess I don't really need
> > to deal with any of this.  I can just su to root whenever I want to
> > change stuff and then back to my account when I just want to use
> > stuff.
> > 
> > And I tried editing the kernel parameters and I kept getting Error 11
> > unrecognized command or something like that.  I think I will stick
> > with the su instead of using sudo.
> 
> Well, seeing the other responses to your sudo/su/root question, I am
> wondering if I am right, at least I am covered, I did say "IIRC". 

Some more thoughts on su vs sudo:  Since you went to the trouble of
disabling root login, you might want to use sudo:  Every instance of
sudo is tracked in the logs, who invoked it, what command was run, but
su is NOT covered.  It will only show foo became root, then it will show
you root ran bar (maybe), but not who was root when bar was run.  Visudo
is really easy, just the vi portion is hard, and then only if you don't
know how to use vi.  The one liner I showed you in an earlier post will
work for you.  If you wanted to be fancy you could use a group instead
of a user name:  $wheel  ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWORD ALL will allow all users
in the wheel group to use sudo with out a password.  
$wheel ALL=(ALL)  ALL will allow all users in the wheel group to run any
command from any computer (using ssh) with a password.

usermod -G $USERNAME wheel will add a user to the group wheel
(substitute the username for $USERNAME) when run as root.  

HTH
> > 
> > 
> > Thanks for the help.  I will see if I can figure out how to fix some
> > of the other issues I am having, if not I will ask more questions.
> > Thanks for all the help.
> > 
> > 
> > Joshua
> > 
> > On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Damon L. Chesser <damon at damtek.com>
> > wrote:
> >         On Sun, 2010-08-15 at 01:50 -0400, Joshua Roberts wrote:
> >         > Well, I have installed Debian with Lxde.  I like the openbox
> >         desktop.
> >         > But here begins the work.  I may need to reinstall to make
> >         my life
> >         > easier.  I chose to not allow root login on this machine.
> >         
> >         
> >         You still have root access, IIRC (I have never dissallowed
> >         root logon my
> >         desktop, what's the point?) you just need to su to root then
> >         run
> >         "visudo"
> >         
> >         add a line that says this:
> >         
> >         $USERNAME   ALL=(ALL)   ALL
> >         
> >         substitute your username for $USERNAME.  visudo takes the same
> >         commands
> >         as vi.  Save, log out, log in, test with sudo ifconfig
> >         
> >         
> >         
> >         > It also seems that I, joshua the user, am not allowed to
> >         access the
> >         > sudo command.  I am not in the sudoers file.  First I have
> >         seen that.
> >         > From what I have read I am going to need to boot into a live
> >         CD and
> >         > edit the file.  Or I can do a minimal boot into /bin/sh and
> >         then mount
> >         > some stuff that I need to edit the file.  Either way it
> >         seems like it
> >         > is going to be some work.
> >         >
> >         > Does anyone have any tips about how to best accomplish this
> >         task of
> >         > giving myself sudo access without a huge headache.  Maybe I
> >         am just
> >         > really tired because the instructions for the sudo file look
> >         really
> >         > confusing.  Even worse than Xorg or Xranr.  Anyway, I am
> >         giong to bed.
> >         > I will fight with it some more another day.  Until then I
> >         will have to
> >         > live with what I have since I cannot install anything else.
> >         >
> >         > Yeah for me.  I managed to F up my first real linux
> >         install.  ( After
> >         > this experience I do not really count Ubuntu as a serious
> >         linux
> >         > install.)
> >         
> >         
> >         my first Debian install (potato?) took me 30 days to get X up
> >         an
> >         running.  You are doing fine (and Linux is getting
> >         exponentially better
> >         and easier to configure).
> >         
> >         >
> >         > Joshua
> >         >
> >         > On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 7:45 PM, Rev. Johnny Healey
> >         > <rev.null at gmail.com> wrote:
> >         >         Ubuntu is debian unstable unstable.
> >         >
> >         >
> >         >         On Aug 13, 2010 10:47 AM, "jrtroberts"
> >         <jrtroberts at gmail.com>
> >         >         wrote:
> >         >         > I have decided to stop using ubuntu and Try Debian
> >         directly.
> >         >         Not sure
> >         >         > how that will affect my linux experience, but I do
> >         not see
> >         >         it being all
> >         >         > that bad.
> >         >
> >         >         > _______________________________________________
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> >         
> >         
> >         
> >         --
> >         Damon
> >         damon at damtek.com
> >         
> >         
> >         _______________________________________________
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> > 
> 
> 


-- 
Damon
damon at damtek.com



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