[Discuss] sudo

Tue Apr 4 11:35:03 PDT 2023

On 2023-04-04 08:50, Craig Miller wrote:
> Bernie,
> 
> Since you are thinking of compiling Linux from source, have you 
> considered Gentoo (which is compiled from source when you install a 
> package)? And it is a non-systemd repo.
> 
> Craig...
> 
> On 4/4/23 01:00, bctill wrote:
>> On 2023-04-03 22:23, Jeremy Van Veelen wrote:
>>> Bernie,
>>> 
>>> Have you considered Haiku, it’s a free BeOS and it sounds like it
>>> has that single user mode gui you may be looking for.
>>> 
>>> Jeremy
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Apr 3, 2023 at 10:07 PM bctill <bctill at ece.uvic.ca> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On 2023-04-03 17:42, Peter Willis wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi BCLUG --
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> "especially if one considers a lot of the applications as users,
>>>> since
>>>>>> having their own user & group allows for the file permissions"
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> What an interestng way of looking at it...
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> "Try `man sudoers` for details"
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> And that's even more interesting.  Thanks!
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>> -- Bernie.
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> It should also be noted that new users, added  to your system, are
>>>> not
>>>>> automatically added to the 'sudo' group.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hence new users will not have sudo access to your system unless
>>>>> specifically given those rights by an admin (you).
>>>>> 
>>>>> MS Windows also has multiuser and not all users added to that are
>>>>> admins either.
>>>>> So no difference really.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Discuss mailing list
>>>>> Discuss at vlug.org
>>>>> http://vlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_vlug.org
>>>> 
>>>> Hi Peter --
>>>> 
>>>> Yes, you're right, but I never had more than one user on my XP
>>>> system,
>>>> never set a password, and never used a login screen.  None of this
>>>> ever
>>>> caused a problem.
>>>> 
>>>> Truth be told, there were a number of accounts on the machine, but I
>>>> 
>>>> disabled all of them except Administrator, Default User (namely,
>>>> me),
>>>> and a dummy user that Visual Studio created to run some of the
>>>> enterprise-edition development tools.  Once I figured out how to
>>>> give
>>>> admin powers to the default user, I never used the Administrator
>>>> account
>>>> again.
>>>> 
>>>> One of the few things I disliked about XP was the way it presented
>>>> the
>>>> desktop as though it was the root of everything else on the machine,
>>>> 
>>>> when actually it was just an awkwardly-named directory buried deep
>>>> in
>>>> the tree.  I never used My Documents or any of the "standard"
>>>> subdirectories of the desktop because it made me feel disoriented.
>>>> 
>>>> I thought of my directory structure not as a tree but as a forest,
>>>> in
>>>> which the trees were called A:\, B:\, and so on.  The number of disk
>>>> 
>>>> drives eventually increased to 14, and of course each one had its
>>>> own
>>>> root directory.
>>>> 
>>>> Everything I installed was installed for "all users", because I knew
>>>> 
>>>> that there would only ever be one.  This enormously simplified
>>>> system
>>>> administration and registry maintenance, which resulted in
>>>> extraordinary
>>>> system stability.  I ran that system 24/365 for more than two
>>>> decades,
>>>> and never had to turn it off except to work on the hardware.
>>>> 
>>>> Sadly, that system had to be retired because no one writes drivers
>>>> for
>>>> it anymore, or maintains the applications that run on it. Therefore
>>>> I
>>>> can no longer migrate it to newer hardware, or maintain
>>>> compatibility
>>>> with newer file formats or protocols.
>>>> 
>>>> Hence, I am now looking to feret out the best practices that will
>>>> allow
>>>> me to create a similarly simple, stable and reliable environment
>>>> under
>>>> Linux.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm also looking to configure something really lean and hard, not
>>>> unlike
>>>> Alpine or BunsenLabs, on which to run a web server, an email stack,
>>>> and
>>>> a deep-packet-inspecting firewall... not all on the same physical
>>>> machine, of course.
>>>> 
>>>> Regards,
>>>> -- Bernie.
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Discuss mailing list
>>>> Discuss at vlug.org
>>>> http://vlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_vlug.org
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Discuss mailing list
>>> Discuss at vlug.org
>>> http://vlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_vlug.org
>> 
>> Hi Jeremy --
>> 
>> BeOS looks interesting, but it seems like too much of an orphan. I 
>> might end up painting myself into a corner if I go that route.
>> 
>> The same might be true of Alpine, but BunsenLabs is Debian fork that 
>> weighs in very light, though not as light as Alpine.
>> 
>> BunsenLabs is a follow-on from CrunchBang, which was very well 
>> regarded, while it lasted.
>> 
>> For now I'm on Ubuntu, which I regret, but I think what makes the most 
>> sense is to stay here until I finish learning how to compile a 
>> complete Linux system from source.  By then, I may have dragged myself 
>> far enough up this learning curve to make an informed decision about 
>> which distro(s) to base the rest of my project on.
>> 
>> It's still early days, but I think I'm leaning towards Devuan for the 
>> workstation and BunsenLabs for the server.
>> 
>> Once I've done that, I may be able to cut out the middlemen and pull 
>> packages down directly from Debian in source form and compile with one 
>> set of parameters to produce the workstation, and another set of 
>> parameters to produce the server.
>> 
>> I don't know.  All that may be way too ambitious or impractical, but 
>> the only way to find out is to take the first step, and then the next, 
>> and continue until I'm done or hit a brick wall, whichever comes 
>> first...
>> 
>> Regards,
>> -- Bernie.
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Discuss mailing list
>> Discuss at vlug.org
>> http://vlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_vlug.org

Hi Craig --

One thing that worries me about Gentoo is that I keep running across 
posts from people who abandoned it because they "got sick of compiling 
it every week".  I very much like what I read about Portage, though. I 
wonder... how hard would it be to avail myself of its advantages while 
compiling a Debian derivative?

I'm currently working through the compilation process as approached by 
Linux From Scratch (LFS):

https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

I'm not at all sure, but it seems to me that this is the more generic 
and versatile approach.  I don't know enough yet to compare the pros and 
cons of LFS vs. Gentoo, but I would love to hear your thoughts about 
that.

Debian, on the other hand, seems to be the at or near the center of the 
FOSS universe, and the more developers you have scrutinizing your source 
code, the more secure and reliable it's likely to be.  Many other 
distros use it as a base, so I think I might learn a lot by comparing 
what Devuan and BunsenLabs have done to customize Debian for specific 
use cases.

The main objections that people have about Debian is its heavy 
dependency on systemd and its slowness to adopt new versions of 
packages.  But Devuan differs from Debian only in that it doesn't force 
systemd on you, and slow and careful is good from my perspective.  If I 
only have to recompile my installation once every few years, that is a 
definite plus!

Regards,
-- Bernie.