Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Remove “This incident will be reported.” from user warnings

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 302 posts

Re: Remove “This incident will be reported.” from user warnings

#121

Post by evilspammer »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #7

For those wondering where the reports go, under systemd-based linux distributions ideally you can get them with this: sudo journalctl /bin/sudo Historically speaking however the sysadmin with access to the 'mail' command would be able to run that and see mail delivered to root@localhost for these reports. I think at least OpenBSD still does things this way [1], but they moved away from sudo YEARS ago now [2] [1] http…

I haven't used journalctl in a while - do you mind explaining how it works with a binary path? Does it report all system logging that came from that executable, as if it were a service file?

Re: Remove “This incident will be reported.” from user warnings

#122

Post by evilspammer »

prmoustache wrote: post #120
jimmaswell wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised to start getting emails about my cron tasks once I set up my mail server. It's neat.

I've always felt it was a very bad practice not to do it. In a lot of companies but one they avoided it for fear of receiving emails. On that only company that did it, we made sure that mailbox was clean by actually having a look when cron scripts were crapping out or when users failed sudo repeatedly and contacted the users. It was a much better housekeeping than log on a box and see there are hundreds of unread ema…

I think it's a fear of _sending_ emails. You could accidentally trigger a cronjob that sends a bunch of emails and gets you put on spam filters. Error reporting for cron is, of course, important; but the builtin email reporting is best used for the local machine/network. A more flexible and robust solution calls out to an API that handles transactional emails/push notifications with debouncing, escalation policies, etc.

Re: Remove “This incident will be reported.” from user warnings

#123

Post by [deleted] »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #93

Reminds me of using Win9x when programs crashed (as often happened then), prompting Windows to present those "This program has performed an illegal operation" dialogs. As a kid the only bit of that message that made any sense was "illegal operation" which made me wonder if I'd broken some law somehow.

[deleted]

Re: Remove “This incident will be reported.” from user warnings

#124

Post by EvanAnderson »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #93

Reminds me of using Win9x when programs crashed (as often happened then), prompting Windows to present those "This program has performed an illegal operation" dialogs. As a kid the only bit of that message that made any sense was "illegal operation" which made me wonder if I'd broken some law somehow.

The first computer at my home was a machine my father bought for bookkeeping for his business. I had a loose understanding of what that meant (around 8-9 y/o). I knew paying taxes was something he did.

I remember looking thru the BASIC manual and seeing “ILLEGAL...” error messages. I assumed it meant that doing whatever this was somehow violated tax laws. Made sense to me since the computer was used for bookkeeping.

Re: Remove “This incident will be reported.” from user warnings

#126

Post by matsemann »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #54

So according to the comments it isn't actually gone, just the wording updated and now dependent on if you have actually set up the mailer to report it somewhere https://github.com/sudo-project/sudo/commit/9757d29a24ac1872...

But I use the output from sudo in my program, changing this message breaks my scripts. /s

Re: Remove “This incident will be reported.” from user warnings

#128

Post by gvurrdon »

wolfd wrote: post #106

When I was in uni, the computer science school actually did occasionally check these reports. Specifically, a guy named Chris checked them. Some friends of mine apparently used this to send him messages. `sudo hi chris`

Similarly, at a place I used to work, messages such as "sudo echo 'Hey John, please would you chmod -R a+r on /storage/data/filename.txt, thanks!'" were used. This usually resulted in irate "Stop that! You have to submit a ticket!" emails.

Re: Remove “This incident will be reported.” from user warnings

#129

Post by bmacho »

mnd999 wrote: post #99
shpx wrote: post #75

Next step is to remove users/groups/sudo from Linux/UNIX entirely. I'm one person using the computer, running software I trust. I don't need it.

I suspect if you look in your passwd file you’ll find lots of users. Does nginx really need to read the files in your home directory?

Why, yes. Imagine you are in flow, and you want to show a file to nginx, but you can't. Better give root (and user) rights to nginx when you set up your system.
Post reply on HN