I’m so frustrated that the default for password fields is “hidden”. The number of times I had someone observing me type a password is Reverse the logic and make a “sudo_h” script which hides the password entry for those rare times you need it.
Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords
351–360 of 421 posts
Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords
#352Somebody tell Apple to fix the login screen for MacOS as well. If your password is longer than the incredibly narrow box, you do not get any additional feedback that your characters are being entered. Combine that with a flaky keyboard (say from a single grain of dust where it shouldn’t be) and you get a very annoying login experience. Over and over…
I felt this pain yesterday. I use Open Core Legacy Patcher (OCLP) to run modern macOS on old Intel macs. The first time the computer boots after an upgrade (e.g. Sequoia 15.7.3 to 15.7.4), it is slow as a dog. Because the macOS upgrade clobbers all the OCLP driver patches. By "slow", I mean each keystroke on the login screen takes about 20-30 seconds for the corresponding bullet to appear in the password box. The log…
That's exactly the situation I wanted to avoid with our aging macbook. I knew it would be a hacky mess trying to keep beating that dead horse to get it to run the latest OS. We couldn't update some software that required us to be on the latest version of MacOS (Signal desktop), so the laptop became prematurely obsolete. We bought a Windows PC instead.
Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords
#353Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords
#354If the issue is knowing that input is being registered they could’ve going with something that does not indicate length, like a rotating fixed place character that shifts at each key press, indicating input is received without showing length.
Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that this move is good. But you should not type sudo passwords on remote machine. Instead setup your machinr to have nopassword for special sdmin account and enable pubkey only authentication.
Why is it better to have a nopassword admin account when using a machine remotely? The point of SSH is to resist mitm attacks, right? If someone could watch my keystrokes, I think I'd have bigger problems!
This resists scenarios where the machine you are running SSH from is compromised, and has a keylogger or something similar installed. SSH can't protect you from a local attacker (in fact, the SSH client binary itself could be the compromised part).
Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
Around 2004 someone gave me Linux CDs (I think it was mandrake?) that I tried to install. And I got stuck at the password input part of the setup, I thought it didn’t work and went back to windows. I didn’t start using Linux until 13 years later… I think I’d have switched much earlier if not for that weird UI decision.
This decision long predates Linux. It's been a staple back to the earliest days of Unix; and it isn't a weird decision if you take into consideration of multi user systems in office environments that have non trivial security considerations (for example telecoms companies), which is exactly where Unix came from.
It was also a time when not every employee had their own computer. It was very normal for pairs or groups of people to all huddle around a machine while working through a problem. It was also common to have someone behind you waiting for their "turn" to use the machine for their project.
Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords
#357Fascinating . . . reading the comments, it seems like the vast majority think this is a long overdue change. For myself, it never occurred to me that there was any issue and I'm slightly unsettled by the change (i.e. it is far from obvious to me that it's a good thing). It is not something I've thought deeply about, of course.
I expect there's an audience selection bias at work: Fewer greybeards and more spiky haired teens reading HN. I think it's an awful idea. Apart from making things less secure it also makes sudo's UX inconsistent with most of the other coreutils. Luckily, I don't plan on doing any more ubuntu installs.
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Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords
#358just swapped out sudo with sudo-rs. only because nixos and easy heh
Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords
#359You can opt-in for a "no visual echo" of any character (asterisk or not) for password prompts: ---- For KDE: sudo vim /etc/sddm.conf.d/hide-password.conf insert in: [Greeter] ShowPasswordEcho=false then reboot. ---- For `sudo`: sudo vim /etc/sudoers.d/password-no-visual-echo Insert/replace `Defaults` with: Defaults !pwfeedback ---- For GNOME, you have to modify `unlockDialog.js` sudo vim /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/…
Or just replace sudo-rs with sudo.
Opinionated security tools maintainers rarely get it right.
Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
> shell motions between macOS and reasonable OSes All the movement commands I know work the same in the terminal on a default install of macOS as it does in the terminal on various Linux distros I use. Ctrl+A to go to beginning of line Ctrl+E to go to end of line Esc, B to jump cursor one word backwards Esc, F to jump cursor one word forward Ctrl+W to delete backwards until beginning of word And so on Both in current…
What happens when you press home or end?
In iTerm at least it goes to the beginning or end of current line.