<p>Excellent answer! Good job.</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 4, 2012 6:13 PM, "David Tomaschik" <<a href="mailto:david@systemoverlord.com">david@systemoverlord.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Michael Nolan <<a href="mailto:michaeldnolan@gmail.com">michaeldnolan@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> This is more of a follow up concept question...<br>
><br>
> Why, if I used mount manager while in my user account, to mount the<br>
> drive with the two partitions (and probably had to enter my user<br>
> password), did it create mount points owned by root?<br>
><br>
> It just makes no (real world) sense to me why, for the sake of<br>
> security and wisdom of using user accounts, (and not logging in as<br>
> root)... a command like sudo is even allowed to exist and be available<br>
> to the user account.<br>
><br>
> I'm really not looking for an answer here... it's just an observation<br>
> from someone who is trying to apply logic to something they don't<br>
> understand, but want and need to.<br>
<br>
I think it's a very valid question, and deserves an answer. Your user<br>
account can't mount devices, create filesystems (write to raw<br>
devices), etc. There are a number of mechanisms by which elevated<br>
privileges are managed, and sudo is a mechanism for elevating those<br>
privileges. In many ways, its similar to UAC on Windows (though long<br>
predates UAC) in that it gives you an ability to control with which<br>
privileges commands are run.<br>
<br>
Sudo also allows system administrators to control what commands a user<br>
can run and as what alternate users.<br>
<br>
The other oft-used mechanism for elevating privileges is actually<br>
using an IPC mechanism like D-Bus that allows unprivileged processes<br>
to "ask" privileged processes to perform tasks on their behalf.<br>
<br>
Hope that clarifies things!<br>
<br>
David<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
David Tomaschik<br>
OpenPGP: 0x5DEA789B<br>
<a href="http://systemoverlord.com" target="_blank">http://systemoverlord.com</a><br>
<a href="mailto:david@systemoverlord.com">david@systemoverlord.com</a><br>
_______________________________________________<br>
Ale mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Ale@ale.org">Ale@ale.org</a><br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br>
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br>
</blockquote></div>