[mythtv-users] OT: SATA errors

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Fri Jul 10 19:55:42 UTC 2009


On Friday 10 July 2009 13:39:42 jedi wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 12:03:44PM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
> > Brian Wood wrote:
> >> Ubuntu has done well at attracting new Linux users (I think it's now
> >> the most popular distro), but at the cost of behaving differently from
> >> "normal" Linux distros. I know they have a "If you're moving from
> >> Windows" section in their docs, perhaps they need an "if you're moving
> >> from a more normal Unix" section.
> >
> > FWIW, discouraging people from logging in as root is not unique to
> > Ubuntu.  Lately I've been playing with OpenSolaris, and I've found that
> > the Solaris world strongly discourages root logins.  In fact, a default
> > install will not let you log in directly as root, even from the console,
> > and most Solaris versions don't even bother to give root a home
> > directory.  Instead they provide a profile mechanism to give user
> > accounts the authority to do various rootly duties, and a pfexec command
> > to run commands using those profiles.
> >
> > It turns out the "all or nothing" approach to administrative privileges
> > that used to exist in Unix isn't very good for security, so more
> > security-conscious implementations tend to shy away from it now.
>
>     sudo has been in wide use in commercial Unix installations for a long
> time. It was commonplace long before Ubuntu decided to use it. If you've
> used more than just Linux it is likely not very shocking.
>
>     It's also pretty trivial to exploit sudo so that you can go about
> doing things the same way you always have... '-)

To me the main advantage to sudo is being able to keep track of who is doing 
what, not something I need on a home system.

But your're right, commercial systems use sudo, but mostly because they have 
multiple people doing administrative tasks, not because they don't trust 
their admins.

It's an option for all Unix systems, I just don't like implying that it is 
the "only" way to do things.

But we're way OT here.
-- 
Brian Wood
beww at beww.org


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