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

Memory-safe sudo to become the default in Ubuntu

trifectatech.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 282 posts

Re: Memory-safe sudo to become the default in Ubuntu

#261

Post by bArray »

rlpb wrote: post #248
bArray wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It isn't reasonable to have different default behaviour - otherwise the majority of users would be vulnerable from a security perspective. A better default behaviour would be to alert the user and allow them to choose to indefinitely defer by "accepting the risk". Some setups, rightfully or wrongfully, have a very long running time and cannot be restarted. > If you want different behaviour, just configure it as you…

> A better default behaviour would be to alert the user and allow them to choose to indefinitely defer by "accepting the risk". That would be terrible UX and is exactly contrary to Ubuntu's philosophy, which is to do the right thing by default. The alternative is to bombard the user with questions that they're generally not in a position to understand, and force them to receive an education on stuff that doesn't matt…

> That would be terrible UX and is exactly contrary to Ubuntu's philosophy, which is to do the right thing by default.

Even in Windows (or at least it used to be), the decision to perform an update now was a user decision. Just killing off applications without warning is the worst UX ever. Randomly killing stuff off is the opposite of what I want my OS doing.

> The alternative is to bombard the user with questions that they're generally not in a position to understand, and force them to receive an education on stuff that doesn't matter to most users before they can use their computer.

It doesn't have to be like that. It could be: "Do you want to update now? The following programs are affected and will be restarted: X, Y, Z. [Learn more]" The answers could be "Yes", "Remind me on next boot", "Remind me later" (offers common delays, i.e. 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week).

What is should never do is take the power away from a user. I saw an Ubuntu user's system restart their snap programs in the middle of delivering a conference presentation without warning. That was the worst way that could have been handled.

Re: Memory-safe sudo to become the default in Ubuntu

#262

Post by johnisgood »

mardifoufs wrote: post #259
johnisgood wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a dismissal. It is worth getting rid of the misunderstandings of Ada. It is worth letting people know that safe alternatives to C do exist and have existed long before Rust. You said it yourself that the issue may have been historical circumstances, in which case it should be clarified. Ada has a lot of great things built-in to the language. I especially love its type system and constructs for concur…

Again it doesn't really matter imo. There's no reason for ada rewrites to not take place, but I don't seem to come across a lot of community projects aiming at rewriting, say, coreutils in Ada. That's maybe due to the lack of hype (something rust doesn't lack at all). But regardless, I think that most people know and have know that memory safe alternatives have existed for a while.

It comes across as if many people think Rust is the "most memory safe alternative". I dunno.

I did start writing coreutils in Ada but I gave up. :(

Re: Memory-safe sudo to become the default in Ubuntu

#263

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Vilian wrote: post #251
fweimer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might not have a systemd instance inside a container, but you still might want to switch user IDs there.

Podman has systemd inside, you can run0 in it

Not all containers are on podman

Re: Memory-safe sudo to become the default in Ubuntu

#264

Post by b112 »

mustache_kimono wrote: post #258
b112 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now, why would Linux want to lay claim to being 'the Rust kernel' and how is that different than Linux being rewritten in Rust Drop the "mischaracterising" routine. You're asserting specific things, so expect to get challenged when they're nonsense.

> Drop the "mischaracterising" routine. You're asserting specific things, so expect to get challenged when they're nonsense. If I said "Coca Cola wants to lay claim to being the best cola soda in the world", I'm sure you would also say to me: "Patently untrue. Where exactly in Coca Cola's public statements are we to find that statement?!", instead of, perhaps reflecting, and asking yourself -- is that a reasonable be…

Ubuntu wants to lay claim to "the Rust distribution" and it's hard to blame them when Linux wants to lay claim to "the Rust kernel".

You stated this as fact, as an active statement and goal. It isn't. At all. It's made up fantasy.

Trying to reframe things after, by changing that statement into "oh, that's just an idea I had!" and then blaming others, is invalid and dishonest.

You seem to want to blame others for your made up, untrue statements being challenged. Give it a rest. Your attempts to blame shift will gain no traction here.

You stated something as fact that is not. You were wrong to do so. You are wrong to blame me for pointing it out. You are wrong to continue complaining.

You are wrong.

Clear?

Re: Memory-safe sudo to become the default in Ubuntu

#265

Post by mustache_kimono »

b112 wrote: post #264
mustache_kimono wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Drop the "mischaracterising" routine. You're asserting specific things, so expect to get challenged when they're nonsense. If I said "Coca Cola wants to lay claim to being the best cola soda in the world", I'm sure you would also say to me: "Patently untrue. Where exactly in Coca Cola's public statements are we to find that statement?!", instead of, perhaps reflecting, and asking yourself -- is that a reasonable be…

Ubuntu wants to lay claim to "the Rust distribution" and it's hard to blame them when Linux wants to lay claim to "the Rust kernel". You stated this as fact, as an active statement and goal. It isn't. At all. It's made up fantasy. Trying to reframe things after, by changing that statement into "oh, that's just an idea I had!" and then blaming others, is invalid and dishonest. You seem to want to blame others for your…

> You stated something as fact that is not. You were wrong to do so. You are wrong to blame me for pointing it out. You are wrong to continue complaining. You are wrong. Clear?

Ugh. Well, I suppose it must seem very unfair to live a life without the benefit of figurative language and/or subtextual meaning. Know that I'm praying for a cure.

Good luck sir or ma'am!

Re: Memory-safe sudo to become the default in Ubuntu

#266

Post by mardifoufs »

johnisgood wrote: post #262
mardifoufs wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again it doesn't really matter imo. There's no reason for ada rewrites to not take place, but I don't seem to come across a lot of community projects aiming at rewriting, say, coreutils in Ada. That's maybe due to the lack of hype (something rust doesn't lack at all). But regardless, I think that most people know and have know that memory safe alternatives have existed for a while.

It comes across as if many people think Rust is the "most memory safe alternative". I dunno. I did start writing coreutils in Ada but I gave up. :(

I agree that it does seem like there's a misconception that there's "C or C++" (system languages) and "the rest" (memory safe but not system langs).

Which is obviously false, and I think the novel thing about rust's hype is that it's always compared to C or C++ (instead of java or c#, for example).

I think that's why it feels like it's the only language that is talked about when discussing "memory safety" (even if most mainstream languages are memory safe now). Go had a similar "system lang" hype to it until it was clear that it really wasn't.

Ada is undoubtedly a systems language (as you said it's been used to build insanely complex systems and it did just fine), but from my POV the little marketing that it has doesn't emphasize that.

I think though one of the reason ada doesn't get discussed a lot is that it doesn't have a big open source community. Ada could even be more popular in terms of actual LoC written, but most of that development is held behind very closed doors, so it's very hard to actually get a community going. Which then makes it hard to actually go through a full rewrite of things like coreutils.

Re: Memory-safe sudo to become the default in Ubuntu

#267

Post by charcircuit »

theamk wrote: post #215
charcircuit wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no other way to make things like modifying files directly under / possible It doesn't need to be possible. >change system configurations You can have an settings app to configure the system. >then you have Android Which is much farther ahead than Ubuntu on security. Ubuntu needs to play catch up. >but then you have certainly not enabled everything a user can do with sudo. The goal is not to be able to do ev…

Sounds like you don't want a Linux system, but rather a Chromebook. Have you seen https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/ ? Install it on your computer and you get Android-like security model, including only verified software and lack of "sudo" or any sort of root access.

A Chromebook is a Linux system. My concern is with Ubuntu improving their security posture. Telling Canonical to give up on Ubuntu and switch everyone over to ChromeOS is not something that I predict would work.

Re: Memory-safe sudo to become the default in Ubuntu

#268

Post by b112 »

mustache_kimono wrote: post #265
b112 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu wants to lay claim to "the Rust distribution" and it's hard to blame them when Linux wants to lay claim to "the Rust kernel". You stated this as fact, as an active statement and goal. It isn't. At all. It's made up fantasy. Trying to reframe things after, by changing that statement into "oh, that's just an idea I had!" and then blaming others, is invalid and dishonest. You seem to want to blame others for your…

> You stated something as fact that is not. You were wrong to do so. You are wrong to blame me for pointing it out. You are wrong to continue complaining. You are wrong. Clear? Ugh. Well, I suppose it must seem very unfair to live a life without the benefit of figurative language and/or subtextual meaning. Know that I'm praying for a cure. Good luck sir or ma'am!

Nothing you alude to above is remotely accurate, and simply another attempt to redirect.

You've now crafted multiple lies, over your muktiple replies, to explain away your untrue statements. This too is wrong.

Re: Memory-safe sudo to become the default in Ubuntu

#269

Post by aaravchen »

Spivak wrote: post #143
bArray wrote: post #121

> This move is part of a broader effort by Canonical to improve the resilience and maintainability of core system components. Sudo-rs is developed by the Trifecta Tech Foundation (TTF), a nonprofit organization that creates secure, open source building blocks for infrastructure software. Ubuntu continuously updates itself without permission, killing apps and losing previous state. You have the Javascript based Gnome…

> Ubuntu continuously updates itself without permission, killing apps and losing previous state. What? Is this some snap thing because apt sure as hell doesn't do this without you configuring it explicitly.

Not sure what OP was referring to, but snaps are indeed a ridiculous problem.

There's no control of when snaps update, Ubuntu has explicitly said they will never add this.

There was no way to disable snap auto-updates until just last year(-ish?) when Firefox finally announced they would no longer support snaps and started telling people how to tear them out and replace them with native packages or Flatpaks. Low-and-behold, Ubuntu suddenly got the feature to disable automatic snap updates. After saying explicitly they would never allow it for years, and telling high-uptime users to instead block snap daemon network access via the firewall to avoid it.

Re: Memory-safe sudo to become the default in Ubuntu

#270

Post by aaravchen »

rlpb wrote: post #182
passivegains wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

apt won't on its own, but if you're using the official images there's probably a service running that's calling it, probably for security patches etc. The bigger problem is upgrading packages deliberately but being surprised by the results. My team's current favorite is the upgrade process itself suddenly having new interactive prompts breaking our scripts.

> My team's current favorite is the upgrade process itself suddenly having new interactive prompts breaking our scripts. This is how dpkg and apt have worked in Debian and Ubuntu pretty much since their inception. Look into debconf, dpkg and ucf configuration to learn how to integrate these with your automation. The mechanisms for this have existed for decades now and have not substantially changed in that time.

dpkg grew knowledge of Source lists suddenly?

If you're installing software from Debian/Ubuntu repos, you can only use aptitude or apt to my knowledge. Other tools give you the ability to install DEB files you already have, and manage what's on your system currently. And aptitude and apt are both well known for never having had a "stable" scriptable interface. In fact they themselves tell you that their commands are not stable and should not be used for scripting, despite no alternative mode or application existing.

Recently Ubuntu moved to apt 3 as well, which massively overhauled the tool from apt 2. All those scripts people wrote to use apt 2 (because there was no alternative) broke recently when they now had to use apt 3.

Post reply on HN