[NTLUG:Discuss] Ubuntu's sudo (was: Rebuild installed packages)

[Robert Citek]

On Dec 15, 2007 7:56 PM,  <ntlug at thorshammer.org> wrote:
> > > For anyone who feels "hamstrung" by the sudo mechanism for executing commands as root, I might
> > > recommend the following:
> > > sudo -s
>
>     Personally I use "sudo su -", which probably accomplishes the same thing.

Almost the same, but they are different environments.  For example,
try this command using both of the above options:

# env | grep -ie home

You'll notices that the home folder is different.

> The only time I got burned by the sudo thing was when I changed the name for my only account without updating /etc/sudoers. I couldn't sudo with the new name and I hadn't set a root password.

An alternate way is to use groups in the /etc/sudoers file.  For
example, to use the group admin:

%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

then make sure your usename is part of the admin group.

Regards,
- Robert