shellutils-1.7/su

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2 total messages Started by Marty Leisner 311/? x? Tue, 01 Sep 1992 16:29

#712

Author: Marty Leisner 311/? x?
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1992 16:29

11 lines
990 bytes

I'm not sure why a wheel group is considered fascist?  Perhaps define the behavior of su to:
	With a certain option, look for a user in the wheel group, and prompt for the logname
password.
This will let su look for a wheel group and user passwords, or just su normally...

This is an issue of whether to have passwords on computers...a modest level of security
is reasonable so people don't do stupid things (a little knowledge is very dangerous).
Of course, if you're malicious, security is just a nuisance...


"a

Re: shellutils-1.7/su

#718

Author: Noah Friedman
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1992 05:48

19 lines
1609 bytes

I consider group wheel a nuisance.  Until unix systems no longer have an
8-group limit before things start breaking, the last thing I need is yet
another gratuitous group to be in.  It's a scarce resource.

However, the feature for su you describe is exactly what some hosts in the
Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT have, and it works pretty well.  To
clarify, su should still let anyone su if they know the canonical root
password---being in group wheel should just be a convenience which means
you can use your own password and not have to remember two separate ones.

>I'm not sure why a wheel group is considered fascist?  Perhaps define the
>behavior of su to: 	With a certain option, look for a user in the wheel
>group, and prompt for the logname password.  This will let su look for a
>wheel group and user passwords, or just su normally...
>
>This is an issue of whether to have passwords on computers...a modest
>level of security is reasonable so people don't do stupid things (a little
>knowledge is very dangerous).  Of course, if you're malicious, security is
>just a nuisance...

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