>
>
> I had a nice time once because in Ubuntu you aren't asked to set
> password for root while installing. It happened that I had not set a
> password on root and a friend came who wished to call -
> exec ("sudo touch /foo") from php. Now for this we needed to put
> www-data (apache's user) user under sudoers list for sudo to work from
> webserver. So carelessly, since I can sudo on a default Ubuntu
> install, I did something like this -
>
> ideamonk at rocksolid:/etc$ sudo chown 777 sudoers
> ideamonk at rocksolid:/etc$ vim sudoers
> ideamonk at rocksolid:/etc$ sudo ls
> sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 777, should be 0
> Segmentation fault
> ideamonk at rocksolid:/etc$ sudo chmod 440 sudoers
> sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 777, should be 0
> Segmentation fault
>
> Wooh! so now I can't do a sudo unless root comes and fixes permissions
> on /etc/sudoers back to normal. Since I haven't set a root password
> yet, I can't even do a su. That's where the GUI user manager in gnome
> came to use and we got rid of the problem.
>
> This case happens to be exclusive to distros that let user ignore root
> password. Are there any serious flaws in sudo?
>
> regards,
>
> Abhishek Mishra
Hmm.... interesting situation. Since all my server/desktop installs have
been home based as of yet, I haven't really run into any problems like
this. However I do prefer CentOS for servers at least in the Linux
world. Ubuntu for desktops since it has pretty good h/w support and
stability compared to other distro's; Fedora is a real pain in the
behind as always packages seem to be broken or not function properly.
I am gona have a try at some proper Solaris servers soon, even though I
have 4 running currently; however what I want to do is get the same out
of Solaris as I am with Linux in the form of CentOS.
It is purely possible, just need to get used to the filesystem and
commands as no init.d, but that's ok am much more familiar with it now.
The only thing that Solaris won't do very easily is TorrentFlux, Cacti,
and Munin for network and system's analysis but that's ok as can use
Linux for that.
I think the issue about sudo is that if the user account becomes
compromised then root gets compromised also..... however I am guessing
the same philosophy applies to Solaris too??
--K
