Re: [tlug] Replacing the WM in Gnome 2.24

[tlug@example.com]

On Saturday 21 February 2009 00:57:10 Curt Sampson wrote:
> While we're at it, Fedora 10 seems to have this odd idea that all users
> of the machine should use the root password for admin tasks, rather than
> their own password (a la sudo). Can this be fixed?

I quite dislike Fedora/RHEL/CentOS and avoid them when possible, but the 
situation is the same for Debian.  I am not annoyed that they still use root 
passwords by default as some people still prefer that way, and it is easy to 
set up sudo.  In Debian, I do something like this soon after booting and 
loggin into a fresh install:

# apt-get install sudo vim
# addgroup --system wheel
# export EDITOR="vim"
# visudo
(add the following line)
------------------------------------------------------------
%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
------------------------------------------------------------
# sed -i '/^wheel/s/$/username/' /etc/group
# passwd

The "username" on the second to last line is my username.  (At this point, I 
am the only user in the system.)  When changing the password on the last 
line, I enter a long, randomly-generated password.  This password should 
never be used, but you can store it in a safe place (encrypted password 
manager) as a precaution.  Note that I still disable root login from 
services.  (That is one gripe with Debian: why does the default sshd config 
allow root login?!?!)

This setup is very similar to the Ubuntu one: simply put users in the wheel 
group to give them full administrative access.

Cheers,

Travis