Donβt need sudo if youβre always root.
Now excuse me. I need to call the bank and find out why my checking account is suddenly $0.
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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root@box ~# sudo fdisk -l
I normally disable root, so I donβt think su would work. Never tried, so maybe I am using it wrong.
doas
I once did a HackTheBox where the privilege escalation weakness was a cronjob running a script. I'm not sure if I correctly remember all the details, but I think it read some parameters from a file and fed them to some other script. Since it had something to do with the webserver the user was administrating, they needed write access to the file, granted via ACL. That took me a while to spot, actually. Not sure why, but ACL is a constant blind spot for me. As for passing the parameters, you can just append the contents of the file to the command and pipe it to bash.
I don't recall what the normal script did, but it needed writing permissions for something. The proper way to do this would be ACL, but I guess I'm not the only one with a blind spot. The easy way to ensure the script can do whatever it needs to is to sudo the whole thing.
So what do you do if you have a script running every ten minutes, reading the first line of a file you can edit, then executing it with superuser privileges?
Whatever the fuck you want.
Huh. I might need to take a peek at one of my cronjobs now. π
You mean we shouldn't have a 'while true; eval $file' job running as root??? Goddammit, someone help me fix my remote admin script!!!
Sudo !!
πππ perfection
IMO the "year of the Linux desktop" will come when distros are designed for people who shouldn't even be allowed to use sudo.
Let me introduce you to atomic distros.
I moved my father on Bluefin 1.5 years ago from his antique MacBook Air. He doesn't know sudo exists. He has never heard of ujust. He doesn't even command line. He hasn't had to do a single update because it all happens in the background. He just.. uses it.
doesn't even have to be atomic, I rescued my wife's shit laptop using Ubuntu Mate (snaps booing in background) and she has never seen the command line unless I open it. It's been like that for over a year at least.
Yes, but contrary to atomic distros, it's not explicitely designed to be as administration free as possible.
Sudo -i
All you need is a single sudo su, correct.
- Turn on monitor.
- Sudo su
- Copying and pasting terminal commands I find off the Internet
- Living life to the fullest.
alias rm="rm -rf";
alias cd="rm ~/Desktop; cd";
pyhton="shutdown now"
People wouldn't just go on the Internet and lie... would they?
How else will the OS know I'm serious ?
"Yes, Do as I say!"
sudo man sudo
Yeah I only use sudo once, for the su.
β¦ but why? βsudo -iβ is a thing. Why get another program involved?
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
Some people think before they type. They also do not think mindlessly typing "sudo" before every fucking line in bash is a valid substitute for knowing what they do. Many of them have been doing so for decades on HPUX, Solaris, BSDs and IRIX on their own and other people's/companies machines, not just on their single bedroom machine.
I don't think many people know about this feature
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I just delete every user but root.
Shut the front door!
In a lot of situations it's actually bad to use sudo because it can impact settings that make programs or file ownership go to root instead of the user.
Oh, you mean better use doas everywhere? Got it.
sudon't tell me what to do
su:
I mean, yeah, it's your computer. Just login on the root account, nothing bad ever comes of that, not even once, nope.
It's a lesson many of us learn the hard way.
sudo dnf --help
Just once.
sudo -s
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