Fake sudo?

Gary C Martin gary at garycmartin.com
Wed Nov 26 08:22:49 EST 2008


Hi list,

Noticed last night that the XO distro has a custom python script (from  
Scott) as a fake replacement to sudo. I was trying to script some  
remote privileged operations over ssh (it's a QA script to help work  
with testbeds of XO), but what tested fine on a debian distro kept  
erroring out on XOs with:

	 "standard in must be a tty"

After much poking I discovered sudo on the XO was a custom script  
using su (su does not allow non ttys to become privileged, only the  
real sudo).

Just curious as to the need for this change, though any hints to a  
workaround would be much appreciated :-) I'm assuming it was added for  
something security related, as a yum install of the real sudo seems to  
suggest it's just an extra ~200k (though it fails to install due to a  
conflict with olpcsudo-1.2-1.noarch).

--Gary

P.S. For now, I'll just pull script features that require privilege,  
the basic en masse logging works fine, just a pity the script can't be  
used to remotely reboot/restart/install/olpc-update/yum kinda stuff.



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