Re: [tlug] server installation best practices/ worksheet

["Keith Bawden" <keith@example.com>]

> That feels wrong, but I cannot work out why. Does each user get /root as
> their home directory, or do they get their own .bash_history, etc?

A users home directory is not defined by their uid. The home directory
is defined in the "directory" field of the /etc/passwd file. "man 5
passwd" will give you more info.

> The first (and in fact only) thing I do when I "only" have sudo access
> is "sudo bash". The first time I tried it I was amazed it worked, but it
> is so much easier than typing in a password every time (it is rare that
> if I need root that I only need to run one command).

sudo is normally set to cache passwords for 5 minutes. If you keep
using sudo the 5 minutes begins from the last usage of sudo.

I also agree with a point made somewhere in this thread by Josh.
Prepending sudo to a command often helps to remind you that you are
running something as root, and therefore should make you think a bit
more about the possible effects of what you are about to do.

For example I did something like "chown -R keith.keith /" as root on a
production DNS server once :-( Left a dot out of that one...

Regards, Keith