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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

We already have runas for years now.

This looks like one of those KPI fulfilling projects.

> This looks like one of those KPI fulfilling projects

It actually wasn't. This has been one of the top community requests for the Windows Command Line for years. Literally, for like, the entire 8 years I've been here, we've been talking about if there was a way to do Sudo for Windows.

This was done because it makes developers happy, plain and simple. If that's a KPI, then that's the one we're optimizing for.

There are several ways to do sudo for Windows already, to the extent this program does sudo for Windows.

In other words, you're not actually solving the reason people are asking you for sudo for Windows. How do I configure my sudoers policy to allow someone to run a specific application (and only that application) through sudo? THAT is the magic of sudo. Sudo is not just "use your own password for root" like you seem to think it is.

I live by a one step at a time philosophy. It's better to make some incremental progress here, now, and open the door for future progress in this space too. Just like the Terminal - what we're putting out here in the first versions is just the first thing we feel comfortable with people using. We've got lots of ideas for more things to add, just, one step at a time :)

I don't know why people are so negative on this project. I already know about gsudo and yet I was still happy to see an official solution! Even if it were to never evolve, not having to pull a third-party executable in is always nice.

Thanks :)

I'd say waking up today to all this... negativity? was kinda a bummer. We've been working hard on something that people (myself included) have been asking for _for years_.

Like, obviously, it's not perfect out of the gate. That's fine! It was a haul enough to ship this in any form. Now that it's out there, we can make more and more improvements. One step at a time.

Sometimes, I just need a break from the internet I guess.

Because it isn't sudo. It's a marketing effort stealing the name of sudo for a completely different technology that is only tangentially related to sudo.

Surely by people trying to do UNIX on Windows.

What is different about sudo vs runas?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sudo/#how-is-sudo-...

Seems like it could be done by adding new features/flags to runas?

And then maybe creating alias to sudo in PowerShell like it does for other things.

The comment in the article links to this explanation:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sudo/#how-is-sudo-...

Thanks for the link, is this the only benefit?

> You can choose to connect the elevated process to the current console window with the disableInput and normal configuration options. This is not supported with runas.

I also thought that using current environment vars you have set/changed in the terminal is an extra benefit, but that's not listed, so it's not?

That requires you to open an new terminal window. You've never been working in a standard terminal, tried to run a command that requires elevation, and been annoyed that you have to open a new window losing your command history?

Or forgot to Run As and opened a non-elevated terminal by accident?

I believe the new window is to prevent SHATTER attacks (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatter_attack), to ensure that a higher privileged process has a higher privileged Window. Is that not a concern anymore with this new sudo, or is there some other mitigation involved not?

EDIT: from the linked wiki page, "By design, all services within the interactive desktop are peers, and can levy requests upon each other. As a result, all services in the interactive desktop effectively have privileges commensurate with the most highly privileged service there."

"In this configuration, Sudo for Windows will open a new elevated console window and run the command in that window. This is the default configuration option when sudo is enabled"

That's the default option but you apparently can still run the elevated command in the current window if you want.

Just like when using runas.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/...

First time I've ever seen someone mention it, all the setup instructions I encounter always just say open an elevated terminal.

> Runas /user:administrator "application.exe"

Think this might be why it's not very well known compared to sudo.

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