Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw0101d | Hacker News Reader

> It’s a funny artifact because most people today use, and have only used Linux in a “single user” context. The “local system administrator” is me!

Except if you're on a team of sysadmins running a fleet of systems, either a whole bunch of cattle and/or numerous pets.

There are numerous occasions that I have to SSH to look at something on an individual system, and it's best practice to go in as yourself and then sudo-to-root if you need to poke into privileged parts. App folks can also be allowed in unprivileged and become the service users if needed.

The fact that sudo can hook into LDAP also means we can centralize privilege escalations with groups and (particular) hosts.

Lots of HPC out there as well that is multi-user.

View on HN

> Except if you're on a team of sysadmins running a fleet of systems

not trying to be rude but this doesn't sound like "most people"

Interesting comment actually. I would have assumed that the vast majority of people using Linux are still sysadmins in small and large companies - this is certainly my personal experience. I wonder how many home users there are versus systems managed by sysadmins. I would still think there’s more in the corporate world, while I would think the opposite for Windows.

> I wonder how many home users there are versus systems managed by sysadmins

Isn’t Android the most popular Linux distro these days? Probably also most TV set-top boxes and other IoT devices

And ironically an Android user (well, an Android user that uses the "official" OS image from the device's manufacturer) is not the system administrator of their phone/tablet, unless they essentially break into it, or install a different OS image designed to allow root access.

Can you tell me how many users of android, TV set-top boxes and other IoT device users are using sudo?

I hate to sound elitist, but I straight-up can’t do any serious coding on anything other than a Linux box. Most of what I do these days is statistical inference on bacterial genomes in the context of antibiotic treatment.

I understand that I’m not the average user, but then again, nobody really is.

That sounds like scientific coding, not serious coding

Serious coding like writing TODO apps for the latest WebTV?

Business applications are far more serious than any scientific code could ever hope to be

It’s because you are a Linux noob. Use a real Unix like macOS! /s

Let the flamewars begin!

If one is really hard pressed to use a windows box, I have found WSL to be a godsend. (eg at work, which is luckily at a relatively small company where IT isn't as locked down as other places I've worked.)

On the other hand, I tried to use powershell the other day for some simple admin tasks and ooooh wow I sure don't have anything nice to say.

Also my living is made on the Windows side, and not the Linux side, so I guess I don't know the pain points of WSL.

The ratio of linux desktop users:sysadmins I know is something like 50:1

Other way round for me

What kind of sysadmins are they then? I don't want to sound dismissive, but is a "windows sysadmins" a thing? Do companies run windows on servers?

windows sysadmins are very much a thing. desktop and laptop MS Windows installed in any company doing anything important is sysadmin'ed centrally. If you require security (not to leak company info) you must disable the ability for users to install anything. The side benefit of this is that the admins can admin other things like mail servers, ip addresses, etc. My gf (accountant) has to call the sysadmins to plug in an external display at home, which they can do remotely at 2 in the morning.

Companies absolutely run Windows servers. In fact, every single company I've ever worked for (except one very small company) has had them. Usually at a minimum, you will have servers running Active Directory, and perhaps DNS (because AD-integrated DNS zones are useful). Then, more often than not companies are MS Exchange shops, plus Sharepoint is common enough.

Generally people aren't running web servers on Windows, but the internal IT infrastructure world uses a ton of Windows servers.

> Generally people aren't running web servers on Windows, but the internal IT infrastructure world uses a ton of Windows servers.

With good reason I'd note, its a use case which windows is profoundly good at - whereas web servers are not something I would say windows is very good at.

> Do companies run windows on servers?

All of the Fortune 500 probably does.

I guess this is a matter of ‘bubbles’. Most people I know that have a Linux box at home - including my parents - are not and have never been sysadmins. But this is probably because there are not that many sysadmins in my bubble?

Kind regard, Roel (former physicist, developing Android apps (for fun) on my Linux laptop, owner of multiple NAS, but never having been a sysadmin in any company)

>> Except if you're on a team of sysadmins running a fleet of systems

> not trying to be rude but this doesn't sound like "most people"

Sure. But sudo still serves a purpose for those folks.

I also use sudo on my macOS system(s) (e.g., MacPorts).

What is (theoretically, or practically) being achieved by running sudo instead of just logging in as root? Can you give an example that justifies typing your password up to hundreds of times per day coupled with deliberate hashing delays?

> What is (theoretically, or practically) being achieved by running sudo instead of just logging in as root?

Auditing.

> Can you give an example that justifies typing your password up to hundreds of times per day coupled with deliberate hashing delays?

1. I don't do that hundreds of times per day because the stuff I run generally runs pretty well.

2. sudo has password caching, so only the first execution needs a password.

3. If I'm doing a lot, I may sudo-to-root: auditing can still see me going in and becoming root, so it can be determined that I did stuff.

If a network intrusion detector warns about something being changed, you can review the logins to see that it happened right as an authorized person accessed the box. A common practice is to not allow root direct ssh access.

If you are in a team of sysadmins, you are still the local system administrator.

The only ones this message applies are the HPC ones and the "app folks", and the number of ssh-apps that require you to log in another computer is very small nowadays.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com