I have one issue with the 'sudo su -' "trick". When there is both a
distro and an original "supplier" of an application (such as Mozilla
Firefox), I use the original, not the distro, except when there are
complicated specifics (such as my past experience with the Nvidia GPU
driver and utilities source package for which I get a prebuilt version
designed for the specific OS and kernel, etc, in use). Why? Every
rebuild has both the possibility of software defects as well as
maintaining the "chain of custody" to be assured that there will be no
compromises added that were not in the original release (e.g., building
on a compromised system for which the compromise inserts a compromise
into the binary executable output).
However, Firefox and other such applications that have an internal
update mechanism that updates from within the application. If the
application is installed as part of the "system", not in the space of
the specific ordinary user, then one must be logged-in as root into a
GUI workspace, not text shell, for the internal update to be enabled.
There may be a way to do this within a GUI workspace manager as an
ordinary user, but such a method does not seem to be universal
(different syntax/operations between GUI workspace systems, and some
types seem not to support such an action) -- whereas a root instance of
that GUI does work.
To do this within Ubuntu requires several files being modified -- I can
share what to do. Of course, in many cases for the update, one
typically can download, say, a .tgz file that contains a full executable
release of the current (update) release version, but this is much more
work than using the internal update mechanism of the GUI application.
On 4/7/21 7:28 AM, Teh, Kenneth M. wrote:
> If you need to run a lot of commands as root, the easiest sudo method is
> simply 'sudo su -' which makes you into root. The trailing '-' does a
> login which replaces your environment with root's.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* [log in to unmask]
> <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Gilbert E.
> Detillieux <[log in to unmask]>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, April 7, 2021 9:19 AM
> *To:* Andrew C Aitchison <[log in to unmask]>
> *Cc:* scientific-linux-users <[log in to unmask]>
> *Subject:* Re: sudo - was Re: FWIW: AlmaLinux now available.
> On 2021-04-07 2:11 a.m., Andrew C Aitchison wrote:
>> On Tue, 6 Apr 2021, Yasha Karant wrote:
>>
>>> The major issue I find is that everything at the system level is sudo
>>> -- however, for Ubuntu, I have found the fixes so that I can become
>>> root and do what I need both from a text interface and a GUI interface.
>>
>> I find sudo on Ubuntu much easier to use than sudo on SL6.
>> By default on Ubuntu you can run succeccive sudo commands without
>> reentering the password each time.
>> I never figured out how to do that with SL.
>
> That doesn't sound like default behaviour for sudo on SL6. I've been
> using it for years, and haven't had the password issue you mention.
>
> Since sudo is pretty old, stable code, there likely aren't any
> differences between its implementation in RHEL/SL vs Debian/Ubuntu,
> other than the content of the /etc/sudoers file. I'd check that against
> the distro's clean, initial configuration, and see what's broken.
>
>> When I need to use pipes or redirect stdin and stdout as root,
>> a simple "sudo bash" first solves those issues.
>
> You can use "sudo -i" to accomplish the same thing, but with perhaps
> more "sane" initial setup, since it simulates a login.
>
> Gilbert
>
> --
> Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <[log in to unmask]>
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>
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