Live data from Hacker News

Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

mastodon.social

511–520 of 902 posts

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#511
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good news! run0 will use polkit[1], which uses JavaScript for its rules[2], so there's no limit to how complex your rules can get! On the other hand, maybe adding a JavaScript interpreter to Linux's trusted computing base isn't good news... [1] https://mastodon.social/@pid_eins/112353420303876549 [2] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/polkit/docs/latest/polk...

If the lesson of xz was "reduce supply chain attack surface" then the freedesktop people clearly haven't received it yet.

Fedora has used PolKit for 12 years now, and the javascript rules have probably been a thing for about as long.

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. I'm not going the effort of breaking it down like he did, so just looking at total lines in the source calculated with "wc -l $(find . -type f)": sudo: 284,103 systemd: 1,981,535

I find your comment here sadly indicative of the level of discussion around systemd from its haters. Your metric is utterly misleading not only because you're almost certainly counting non-code files, but more crucially, because the systemd repository contains the code for *sixty-nine* entirely separate binaries, separate tools under the overall systemd project umbrella , so counting their collective code size as if…

His methodology actually favors systemd, as sudo is for example vendoring its dependencies in the repository.

    diath@11km :: /tmp » git clone https://github.com/systemd/systemd
    diath@11km :: /tmp » cloc --match-f="(c|h)" systemd/src
    C                             1478         165173          37638         584876
    C/C++ Header                  1083          15580          22432          59692

    diath@11km :: /tmp » git clone https://github.com/sudo-project/sudo
    diath@11km :: /tmp » cloc --match-f="(c|h)" sudo/{src,include}
    C                               41           2104           3359          16384
    C/C++ Header                    36            797           2159           5158

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#513

> One could say, "run0" is closer to behaviour of "ssh" than to "sudo", in many ways. This is an interesting offhand comment. You could implement a very similar tool by SSHing to localhost.

It's the usual way to make changes to a privileged file in Emacs; ssh to localhost with root.

Why not use sudoedit?

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#514
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use something else then? Linux won on Unix merits. Feels a bit disingenuous to use that against it, especially when including half the system libs has caused one major and highly publicized security issue already

> Use something else then? What a tiresome response, but here, I'm feeling in a loquacious mood, so I'll humor it. First, what else would I use? I don't just want a "well designed" operating system, I also NEED an open source, customizable one that is compatible with the vast majority of developer tools and build systems and toolchains — and that is, without a doubt, Linux. I don't have a better option from a practic…

Way too loquacious. Definitely not the Unix way.

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what would be the equivalent to, "Oh, I don´t know the name of the log for this process I can see in 'ps aux', let me cd into /var/log and see what filenames I can find ... or grep everything until I can find a couple of words that make some sense so I can keep digging further"? The lack of explorability in journalctl, the "need" to keep everything locked behind their own flavor of tools and magic file types, is…

Well `-u` refers to the unit file, so I would start with `sudo systemctl status` which lists the status of active unit files. I bet I could find the unit name I'm looking for there. If not, then `sudo systemctl list-units` should have it. (and you can grep the output of both) Systemd and Journald are less opaque than I used to think. Even if you don't want to learn the commands, all of its unit files (and the relatio…

systemctl does not have the Unix nature.

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#516

I'm not a fan of sudo. It's does so much it needs BNF to describe it's configuration format. Who knows, maybe replacing the configuration with polkit is a good idea. Still it's a stand alone binary with one clear job to do, simple enough that one person has no trouble getting their head around it so it's not surprising it hasn't had too many problems over it's long life time. This made me smile: > sudo has serious pr…

For anyone else unfamiliar with BNF:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multi-user clusters are still quite common in HPC. And I think you're not going to see a switch away from multi-user systems anytime soon. Single user systems like laptops might be a good use-case, but even the laptop I'm using now has different accounts for me and my wife (and it's a Mac). When you have one OS that is used on devices from phones, to laptops, to servers, to HPC clusters, you're going to have this fri…

you could potentially create multiple containers in that machine which are single user and give to every user who needs access. CPU/Memory/GPU can be assigned in any way you want(shared/not shared). Now no user can mess up another user.

It's not "that machine" it's a cluster of dozens or hundreds of machines that is partitioned in various ways and runs batch jobs submitted via a queuing system (probably slurm).

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood the need for sudo(1) on single-user, physical machines: I keep a root shell (su(1)) around for admin tasks, and it's always been sufficient.

One password is easier than two and it feels weird to use the same password for both accounts. About half of my sudo invocations are 'sudo su' lmao.

You're entering your own accounts password, not root, when you use sudo. It's a security measure to prove our shell hasn't been hijacked and to make you pause and acknowledge your running a command that may affect the entire system.

You can also disable it in the sudoers file.

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gnome is great if you're willing to do things their way. I Like Gnome a lot actually.

Gnome's UI peaked at 2.32. Find out how the users operate and implement so users can work efficiently. Don't make changes just to make your mark or to make users work on the desktop like they see on a cell phone. That is so basic.

I have no idea why Gnome keeps on insisting on breaking expectations. From the shell as a whole to the widgets and even the window titlebars they seem to insist on being different for the sake of being different.
Post reply on HN