[ale] dialog box vanishing in Ubuntu

[Brian Pitts]

On 09/16/2010 10:17 AM, Ron Frazier wrote:
> Brian,
> 
> Thanks for that tip.  I looked at the instructions, as well as looking at 
> some information about editing the /etc/sudoers file.  I'm a bit reluctant 
> to do that since you have to use visudoers to edit it and it's apparently 
> easy to mess it up.  I can keep entering my password to start firestarter, 
> but I'm still curious why that dialog box vanishes when gnome starts.
> 
> Also, I notice that my username, the only one on the computer, is in the 
> Ubuntu admin group but not the sudo group.  Can anyone explain the 
> functions of those two groups?

Is there a group named sudo in Ubuntu?

Ubuntu has the entry

%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

which means 'members of the admin group, on any computer where this file
is installed, can run as any user any command'

The point of using visudo is that it checks the syntax of the file. It
will warn you if it's messed up when you try to save it. Also, don't be
afraid because it has vi in the name. visudo uses whatever editor you
set as the default by running 'sudo select-editor'. The default out of
the box is nano.

-- 
All the best,
Brian Pitts