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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

Can someone share even one story where sudo reporting these "incidents" was helpful?

This feature seems to come from a world where elite hackers simply repeat the same sudo command over and over hoping it will eventually work.

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Yes. More or less the first time I used Linux was on a fedora workstation at my desk at MIT. The very nice sysadmin down the hall sent me an email just a bit later saying "We see you were trying to install x program. We installed it for you." I understand that this is a very rare experience but the first time I saw that message, a helpful person was actually looking at these reports.

It sounds like you were able to successfully run sudo, just with a somewhat longer latency.

Does this kind of sysadmin still exists? (or do they even still have the freedom to be so kind?)

I cannot really imagine that happening today, at least not in "professional" context.

Yes....?

If I see info in logs and it could help a user (my userbase is internal), I reach out to them. I've coached a number of them through improving something on their end, even if it's not a critical change.

And I'm by no means some sysadmin wizard.

"And I'm by no means some sysadmin wizard. "

It is more about the general attitude, so thank you, for being a helpful IT admin.

It still happens, a fellow student and friend of mine got this response ('installed it for you') about two years ago at Radboud University Nijmegen after entering `sudo apt install nasm`

Glad to hear that. I really like that style and attitude. It shows competence, humor and willingness to help.

My admins were sadly mostly of the grumpy type, who did not like change, or initiative to solve peoples problem.

I have a small server that some of my friends have accounts on. When they accidentally (or not!) try to use sudo (often this happens with a "curl | sh" thing) I like to be informed.

> Can someone share even one story where sudo reporting these "incidents" was helpful?

No, not a single one.

“And, if we did, we’d have to kill you.”

Fool, I have signal handlers defined for all signals! You won't be rid of me that easily!

HN puzzles me with these downvotes. I have not a single story to share about sudo reporting the incidents and that being useful and I've managed *NIX systems for 2 decades now. Anyway, looks like there's some people out there there feel very strong about this.

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