Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-11-03 Thread Guido Günther
On Tue, Nov 02, 2010 at 05:47:45PM +, Ian Jackson wrote: Guido Günther writes (Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges): Imho we should use diffrent groups for PolicyKit and sudo. d-i would need to add the user to two groups

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-11-02 Thread Ian Jackson
Guido Günther writes (Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges): Imho we should use diffrent groups for PolicyKit and sudo. d-i would need to add the user to two groups then but it would allow for polkit and sudo only configurations: Why should

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-11-01 Thread Guido Günther
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 12:38:41AM +0200, Michael Biebl wrote: Hi, as some of you might know, the debian installer allows to install a system with a disabled root account, i.e. there is no root password set for root. In lenny, iirc, this was done via d-i pre-seeding, in squeeze it is as

Re: History ...: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-25 Thread Osamu Aoki
Hi, My concern was random introduction of more new groups with confusing names and overwrapping capabilities with inconsistent documentation. Besides, it sounded funny to say reinvent the wheel. On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 09:22:10PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: On Sun, 24 Oct 2010 at 18:05:45

History ...: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-24 Thread Osamu Aoki
Hi, Let's not reinvent the wheel :-) (Let's use old wheel group in line with current documentations.) On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 09:44:41PM +0200, Arthur de Jong wrote: On Thu, 2010-10-21 at 16:48 +0100, Philip Hands wrote: If we decide to reject 'admin', I think we should use sudo. I find the

Re: History ...: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-24 Thread Simon McVittie
On Sun, 24 Oct 2010 at 18:05:45 +0900, Osamu Aoki wrote: (Let's use old wheel group in line with current documentations.) That's not in line with wheel's historical use, though... historically wheel meant may run su(8) at all. Everyone on a GNU system has the privileges traditionally given to

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-23 Thread Arthur de Jong
On Thu, 2010-10-21 at 16:48 +0100, Philip Hands wrote: If we decide to reject 'admin', I think we should use sudo. I find the argument that admin is confusing given the presence of adm fairly convincing -- It's all too easy to say something like could you add fred to the adm group over the

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-22 Thread Ian Jackson
Carsten Hey writes (Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges): A group named sudo or sudoroot is somehow linked to sudo as tool used to gain administrative privileges. No one knows if in future an other tool will be the de facto standard

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-22 Thread Simon McVittie
On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 at 17:53:53 -0600, Bob Proulx wrote: Giacomo A. Catenazzi wrote: It depends on the definition of equivalent. The definition of root-equivalent I'd use is: if an account is compromised (an attacker gains control of it), and the attacker can get root privileges as a result,

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-22 Thread Simon McVittie
On Fri, 22 Oct 2010 at 11:44:31 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that priv was occasionally used as a username for an ordinary user. If I saw it out of context I'd also tend to assume that priv is short for private instead of privileged, but perhaps that's just

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-22 Thread Teodor MICU
On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Ian Jackson ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote: Carsten Hey writes (Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges): A group named sudo or sudoroot is somehow linked to sudo as tool used to gain administrative

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-22 Thread Carsten Hey
* Simon McVittie [2010-10-22 12:10 +0100]: On Fri, 22 Oct 2010 at 11:44:31 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that priv was occasionally used as a username for an ordinary user. If I saw it out of context I'd also tend to assume that priv is short for private

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-21 Thread Christian PERRIER
Quoting Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org): How about the root group? Any already-existing group is going to have the problem that some sites will already be using it for something else. We put all sysadmins in Isn't that the same for any kind of clever group name we'll find? Unless we

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-21 Thread Ben Finney
Christian PERRIER bubu...@debian.org writes: And for ${deity}'s sake, people […] should stop talking about 'bikeshedding' [which has the condescending] implication: the discussion is useless. This discussion is not. We will have to live with whatever group name we choose now for *years*,

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-21 Thread Michael Banck
Hi, On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 12:38:41AM +0200, Michael Biebl wrote: So, I'm wondering if we shouldn't pick a more neutral name without a previous history in Debian. One suggestion is to use group admin. Ubuntu has been using that group for exactly the purpose what we are going for and I think

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-21 Thread Russ Allbery
Christian PERRIER bubu...@debian.org writes: Quoting Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org): Any already-existing group is going to have the problem that some sites will already be using it for something else. We put all sysadmins in Isn't that the same for any kind of clever group name we'll find?

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-21 Thread Philip Hands
On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:49:00 +0200, Christian PERRIER bubu...@debian.org wrote: Quoting Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org): ... Maybe sudo is not that bad, after all..:-) If we decide to reject 'admin', I think we should use sudo. I find the argument that admin is confusing given the presence

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-21 Thread Giacomo A. Catenazzi
On 20.10.10 13:28, Simon McVittie wrote: Quoting from base-passwd again: Allows users to add local modifications to the system (/usr/local, /home) without needing root privileges. Compare with group 'adm', which is more related to monitoring/security. Note that the ability

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-21 Thread Carsten Hey
* Russ Allbery [2010-10-21 02:37 -0700]: I like sudoroot, personally, but I think sudo is probably okay. A group named sudo or sudoroot is somehow linked to sudo as tool used to gain administrative privileges. No one knows if in future an other tool will be the de facto standard to gain

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-21 Thread Bob Proulx
Giacomo A. Catenazzi wrote: Simon McVittie wrote: ... so in practice, staff is root-equivalent, but in principle it's not meant to be. (Yay.) It depends on the definition of equivalent. Anyway staff is a protection against user (aka admin)* errors*, not against *malicious* admins. I

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-20 Thread Christian PERRIER
Quoting Steve Langasek (vor...@debian.org): On the other hand, is it really necessary a new group? Can't adm or operator be overloaded with this new functionality? (think Ockham's razor). No. Both of those groups also have other meanings. How about the root group? signature.asc

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-20 Thread Vincent Danjean
[reply-to set to d-d only] On 20/10/2010 07:12, Christian PERRIER wrote: Quoting Steve Langasek (vor...@debian.org): On the other hand, is it really necessary a new group? Can't adm or operator be overloaded with this new functionality? (think Ockham's razor). No. Both of those groups

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-20 Thread Bernhard R. Link
* Vincent Danjean vdanjean...@free.fr [101020 09:46]: How about the root group? This would hurt systems where umask is 002 (or 007) by default (the root group is the primary group of the root user with nobody else in it) No, the root group (aka wheel) group is the group of people that are

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-20 Thread Mehdi Dogguy
On 20/10/2010 11:18, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: So I would suggest to use a name that is more likely to be unique. unique wrt. what? admin seems unique since not used in Debian yet. Happy hacking, -- Mehdi Dogguy مهدي الدڤي http://dogguy.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-20 Thread Simon McVittie
On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 at 01:58:22 +, The Fungi wrote: On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 09:48:58AM +0200, Jesús M. Navarro wrote: On the other hand, is it really necessary a new group? Can't adm or operator be overloaded with this new functionality? (think Ockham's razor). Maybe similarly

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-20 Thread The Fungi
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:28:49PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: Quoting from base-passwd again: [...] ... so in practice, staff is root-equivalent, but in principle it's not meant to be. (Yay.) Right, which was why I also chose to use it for staff who I trusted with root access, but wanted

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-20 Thread Otavio Salvador
Maybe god ;-) On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 8:16 AM, Mehdi Dogguy me...@dogguy.org wrote: On 20/10/2010 11:18, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: So I would suggest to use a name that is more likely to be unique. unique wrt. what? admin seems unique since not used in Debian yet. Happy hacking, --

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-20 Thread Julien Cristau
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 17:38:23 +0200, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote: Otavio Salvador wrote: Maybe god ;-) What about the adm group ? Is it the same as the admin ? What about reading the thread and relevant documentation instead of repeating turned down ideas for the bikeshed colour?

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-20 Thread Russ Allbery
Christian PERRIER bubu...@debian.org writes: Quoting Steve Langasek (vor...@debian.org): On the other hand, is it really necessary a new group? Can't adm or operator be overloaded with this new functionality? (think Ockham's razor). No. Both of those groups also have other meanings. How

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread Josselin Mouette
Le mardi 19 octobre 2010 à 00:38 +0200, Michael Biebl a écrit : 1/ The sudo group in previous Debian releases had a different meaning: Members of groups sudo could run sudo without needing a password. Did it exist in previous releases? I don’t recall seeing it in sudoers. 2/ Using the name

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread Bjoern Meier
hi, 2010/10/19 Michael Biebl bi...@debian.org: Hi, Bdale went ahead and added the following to /etc/sudoers: # Allow members of group sudo to not need a password # (Note that later entries override this, so you might need to move # it further down) %sudo ALL=(ALL) ALL First of all: YES!

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread Michael Biebl
On 19.10.2010 08:15, Josselin Mouette wrote: Le mardi 19 octobre 2010 à 00:38 +0200, Michael Biebl a écrit : 1/ The sudo group in previous Debian releases had a different meaning: Members of groups sudo could run sudo without needing a password. Did it exist in previous releases? I don’t

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread Jesús M. Navarro
Hi, Josselin: On Tuesday 19 October 2010 08:15:56 Josselin Mouette wrote: [...] Le mardi 19 octobre 2010 à 02:12 +0200, Jesús M. Navarro a écrit : What about the old-fashioned wheel group[1]? This would be an even worse disaster than “admin”, for similar reasons. Users of the “wheel” group

Re: Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread Fabian Greffrath
I definitely agree that we need to get this change into squeeze and that we need to be careful to not get into bikeshedding about names. On the other hand, choosing a group for a purpose like this should imho be done carefully as changing the name later is hard if not impossible. Since this

Re: Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread Josselin Mouette
Le mardi 19 octobre 2010 à 09:49 +0200, Fabian Greffrath a écrit : Since this group would be Debian-specific, how about Debian-admin or Debian-sudo (as in Debian-gdm or Debian-exim)? The Debian-exim and Debian-gdm names are system users that are meant to never conflict with existing,

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread Josselin Mouette
Le mardi 19 octobre 2010 à 09:58 +0100, Philip Hands a écrit : For PolicyKit, I can now simply ship a file, say /etc/polkit-1/localauthority.conf.d/51-debian-sudo.conf which contains: [Configuration] AdminIdentities=unix-group:sudo I would object to 'sudo' being a group of people

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread Philip Hands
On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:38:41 +0200, Michael Biebl bi...@debian.org wrote: Bdale went ahead and added the following to /etc/sudoers: # Allow members of group sudo to not need a password # (Note that later entries override this, so you might need to move # it further down) %sudo ALL=(ALL)

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread Olaf Mandel
Am Dienstag, den 19.10.2010, 08:15 +0200 schrieb Josselin Mouette: Le mardi 19 octobre 2010 à 00:38 +0200, Michael Biebl a écrit : -Snipp- So, I'm wondering if we shouldn't pick a more neutral name without a previous history in Debian. One suggestion is to use group admin. Ubuntu has

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread Simon McVittie
base-passwd documents sudo as Members of this group do not need to type their password when using sudo, which is no longer true. I've opened a bug. On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 at 09:48:58 +0200, Jesús M. Navarro wrote: On the other hand, is it really necessary a new group? Can't adm or operator be

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread The Fungi
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 09:48:58AM +0200, Jesús M. Navarro wrote: [...] On the other hand, is it really necessary a new group? Can't adm or operator be overloaded with this new functionality? (think Ockham's razor). Maybe similarly overloaded, but I've used the built-in staff group for this

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-19 Thread Steve Langasek
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 09:48:58AM +0200, Jesús M. Navarro wrote: On Tuesday 19 October 2010 08:15:56 Josselin Mouette wrote: [...] Le mardi 19 octobre 2010 à 02:12 +0200, Jesús M. Navarro a écrit : What about the old-fashioned wheel group[1]? This would be an even worse disaster than

[RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-18 Thread Michael Biebl
Hi, as some of you might know, the debian installer allows to install a system with a disabled root account, i.e. there is no root password set for root. In lenny, iirc, this was done via d-i pre-seeding, in squeeze it is as simple as leaving the root password prompt empty. The lenny installer

Re: [RFC] disabled root account / distinct group for users with administrative privileges

2010-10-18 Thread Jesús M. Navarro
Hi, Michael: On Tuesday 19 October 2010 00:38:41 Michael Biebl wrote: Hi, [...] The idea is, to have a distinct group. Members of that group have administrative privileges using sudo and PolicKit. [...] While I think the idea of using a distinct group for users with administrative