[ale] bash commands

Wed May 23 10:17:31 EDT 2012

I disagree that UNIX admins shouldn't know the root password.   Sometimes the only way to get into a system is via root on the console.   (Of course I'm talking about without first doing a reboot - sometimes a reboot is the worst thing you can do.)   By POLICY admins shouldn't login as root directly except in cases where they must but taking the root password away from admins in my view is just asking for extended downtime when major issues occur.

The paragraph you mention as contradictory wasn't - the admin accounts I was speaking of were application specific and NOT the root account itself.

After 21 years I think I'm probably safe in calling myself a SysAdmin.  Heck I even have a certificate from RedHat that calls me a "Certified System Administrator" :-)   (Thats on top of tons of training on various other flavors of UNIX and associated applications and hardware such as NetBackup. EMC and Hitachi.)

You point about management vs administrator is a bit specious.  Certainly SysAdmins are expected to "manage" things but many employers are quite happy to rely on them to fix serious issues without bothering to ask for or accept their input on how to prevent such issues in the first place.

So the next reply will likely be: " If you work in a place like that get a new job."
That particular piece of advice is often tossed around by people that don't work in real world environments where the Systems Administration team is NOT the tail that wags the dog.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Brian Mathis
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2012 9:44 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] bash commands

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Lightner, Jeff <JLightner at water.com> wrote:
> I disagree with the purpose of sudo stated previously.  It was not
> designed to prevent System Admins from getting root access.  It was
> designed to allow NON-system admins to access only those few things
> they need as root without giving them the root password and full root access.

I understand how the purpose of sudo seems somewhat muddy -- after all, all we UNIX folk like to think of each tool as having only one purpose, unless it's a programming language or something.  Sudo can be unclear because it provides a few different functions:
    - Limit users to running only some commands as root
    - Provide an audit trail of who executes what commands as root
    - Remove the need for anyone to know the root password Those who don't like the idea of sudo often grab onto one or two of these uses to make a point, but completely ignore the others.

> Over time PHBs have somehow decided that even System Admins shouldn’t
> have root which is why you see abominations like “sudo” only distros.
> System Admins do spend a lot of their time as root no matter how much
> hand wringing is done by people that like to claim it isn’t secure.

You seem to be confusing "Management" with "those who manage".  If you're a sysadmin then you are in the second category, at least you better be otherwise you're just a techie who happens to get paid for it.  As already stated, sudo is a very big help to anyone managing root passwords.  Please see my previous email about this.

No one should be using shared accounts or know the root password, because whenever the team changes you have to change the passwords and tell everyone the new password (except each system should have a different root password, so have fun with that).

> The sad thing about sudo is how many admins do not seem to understand
> what they’re giving to users with it.   The first place I saw it they
> gave users “sudo vi”.   I had to show them what “:!/bin/sh” did in
> such a session.   I also had to explain to them why sudo access to
> shell scripts that were not writable only by root in a directory only accessible by root was a bad idea.

This is the typical security wonk "sudo sucks" argument.  In isolation, this back door is obviously a problem, but like any tool, you need to be aware of it.  However, it's really about the tool you are giving access to, not a problem with sudo itself.  There are plenty of modes where granting access to commands through sudo do not pose such a problem, so it's hardly the silver bullet argument that kills sudo.

> I’ve only worked one place where I thought they handled sudo for
> Admins correctly.   They had syslog traffic going to a server NOT
> controlled by the Admins and any time you used sudo you had to put in
> a reason why and be prepared for a query from management because they
> got emails when you did it.   You could hide what you did after
> becoming root but not the fact that you HAD become root.
>
> We use sudo extensively here mainly for its (IMHO) original purpose.
> One great use of it is to get rid of purely administrative accounts
> for applications where everyone knows the password.   By requiring
> users that need access to such administrative accounts to do “sudo su
> - <account>” you can log which user became that administrative user
> right before everything went to hell in a handbasket.

I'm not following here.  This last paragraph seems to contradict the first few.  What you are doing with it here is perfectly in line with the purpose of sudo, and what we have been talking about here.  Sudo provides auditing and the ability to remove shared passwords, including shared passwords to the root account.  It's the same thing.

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 6:27 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
> Big +1
>
> sudo is not a tool for admins.

I'm not sure how you could be following this thread and still say that.  Despite these feelings about it, changes like this don't make headway into common practice without being reviewed by a great many security people.  As most distros have moved to this model, it appears that they disagree with you.

❧ Brian Mathis

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