Sudo file location

In order to use sudo you first need to configure the sudoers file. And you should not edit it directly, you need to use the visudo command. The first part is the user, the second is the terminal from where the user can use sudo command, the third part is which users he may act as, and the last one, is which commands he may run when using sudo. And just because of your dedication, and still reading until here, I'll show you how to set nano or vim to use with visudo command as default editor.

The two best advantages about using sudo command are: Restricted privileges Logs of the actions taken by users I'm sure you are now fully aware of the advantages of using sudo command in a daily basis, how to use it?

This basically executes any command the user gives it with the same permissions that less is running under, which can be quite dangerous. There are a few more pieces of information that may be useful when dealing with sudo.

For convenience, by default, sudo will save your authentication details for a certain amount of time in one terminal. For security purposes, if you wish to clear this timer when you are done running administrative commands, you can run:. You will be prompted for your password, which will be cached for later sudo uses until the sudo time frame expires. This gives you a good idea of what you will or will not be allowed to do with sudo as any user.

There are many times when you will execute a command and it will fail because you forgot to preface it with sudo. The double exclamation point will repeat the last command.

We preceded it with sudo to quickly change the unprivileged command to a privileged command. This will cause sudo to return a silly insult when a user types in an incorrect password for sudo. We can use sudo -k to clear the previous sudo cached password to try it out:.

You should now have a basic understanding of how to read and modify the sudoers file, and a grasp on the various methods that you can use to obtain root privileges. Remember, super-user privileges are not given to regular users for a reason. It is essential that you understand what each command does that you execute with root privileges. Do not take the responsibility lightly. Learn the best way to use these tools for your use-case, and lock down any functionality that is not needed.

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Security SysAdmin. This guide will walk you through the steps to create or add a sudo user on CentOS 7. The sudo command The sudo command is the preferred means to handle elevated permissions. Standard user accounts are restricted Are you looking to change the root password in Ubuntu? Changing passwords is a good practice and should be Sudo stands for superuser do.

Sudo is a command used in Unix-like systems to allow a regular user to execute All Rights Reserved. Reason, if you are root, all the doors in your system are open to everything, which leaves your system vulnerable. In some distros, the maintenance user account is already setup in that special file. All you do is type:. I have realized that not every distro allows this easy transaction, and that you may have to manually add your username to the sudoers file. Well, we just snatched the VIP list from the sleeping guard and will show you how to put your name on it.

The sudoers file is a file Linux and Unix administrators use to allocate system rights to system users. This allows the administrator to control who does what. Remember, Linux is built with security in mind. When you want to run a command that requires root rights, Linux checks your username against the sudoers file. The default user for the su command is root. Then you will enter the password for the root account, giving you a shell prompt where you can run any command as root.

Again, this not safe. Once you are logged in as root, the system is open to vulnerabilities.