[LINK] Ubuntu

[Scott Howard]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 1:16 PM, Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com> wrote:

> > gunzip -c scanModem.gz > scanModem
> > chmod +x scanModem
> > sudo ./scanModem
> > gedit Modem/ModemData.txt
>
> Why people insist on using sudo? is it too much work to tell the user
> type "su" enter your admin password, and then go on with the procedure as
> root?


In practice, when using "su" most people tend to run all commands as root -
either all for the specific task they are trying to carry out, or even all
commands they run at all on the system.  Anyone that's been a sysadmin for
any time will know the danger in that, and it's only a matter of time before
you run a command which will cause damage where it woulnd't have if run as
non-root.  Obviously sudo doesn't remove that risk entirely, but it does
reduce the likelyhood due to less commands being run as root.


> sudo carries its own set of problems that are totally overkill for the
> end user, sometimes a given comment is not allowed to be used with
> sudo, hence you have to tell the user to edit "etc/sudoers" and the
> like.


Broadly speaking, there 2 ways to use sudo - either "ALL" where you're
simply using it as another way to get to root, or with a limited list of
commands where you're trying to use it to restrict what a user can do.  Your
comments above don't seem to suit either of those use cases...



> I don't understand the insistence on using gzip either when just a
> .zip would suffice. with gzip you have to enter a parameter whereas
> with zip you just 'unzip file.zip'. Zip and unzip are part of every
> distro nowadays. Not to mention the relic of .tar.gz files...


No, you don't need to pass an option to gunzip.
gunzip scanModem.gz  works perfectly. It's even exactly the same number of
characters as there is in "unzip scanModem.zip"

I'm not even going to start on the zip v's tar.gz thing - if it's a real
concern google will be able to help you.  If it's a troll as it seems, go
elsewhere...

  Scott.