On Sun, 7 Dec 2003, Craig White wrote:
> I haven't seen the need to use sudo and I never start X as root - if I
> actually need to run something as root, I open a terminal - su to root
> and thus, if I wanted to run say Kate as root, I could just simply
> launch it from a terminal while root.
>
> I pretty much figured that sudo is for multiple shell users on the same
> server box and I don't think that is what Michael is doing. Perhaps, if
> nothing more, it is about furthering his learning while he struggles to
> use the computer, primarily in X as a normal user without super user
> privileges.
I also don't run X as root.
sudo is useful because it does some logging of who uses it.
sudo is useful because it can easily give you privileges for other users
(not only root).
sudo is useful because it sets the privileges one command at a time. (So
you don't forget to stop using your root shell).
sudo is useful for automated tasks. For example, I do package builds as a
normal user, and then the automated installs are done using sudo.
On systems without sudo, I use
su root -c "command -to run"
Also, there are some alternatives to sudo, like super and some others.
Jeremy C. Reed
http://www.reedmedia.net/
(text/plain)