[Linuxcommand-announce] [LinuxCommand.org: News And Rants] Adding Ubuntu-style sudo To Fedora 10

[William S. <bs...@pa...>]

One of the neat things about Ubuntu is the absence of a discreet user
account for root. This was an unusual idea when it was introduced a
couple of years ago, and I myself, had some initial doubts about it.
But that was then and this is now. I have come to really enjoy this
feature.I recently installed Fedora 10 on one of my test systems and
decided to see what was involved in getting a similar feature in
Fedora.The sudo command is governed by a configuration file
named /etc/sudoers. This file defines the users who are allowed to use
sudo and precisely what commands they are allowed to execute with
elevated privileges. I have written definitions for this before, so I
took a look at the Fedora 10 sudoers files to see how to add myself to
the list of users that can execute any command as root.What I
discovered was that the Fedora 10 sudoers thoughtfully provides the
following lines:## Allows people in group wheel to run all
commands# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALLThis definition states that any user
belonging to the group wheel will have full access to all commands.
Just what the doctor ordered!So this leaves me with two things to do:
- Uncomment the line in the sudoers file to enable the definition.
- Add myself to the wheel group.The first task is pretty easy. I just
fire up vi (as root) and edit /etc/sudoers. I only need to remove the
leading pound symbol to make the change:## Allows people in group wheel
to run all commands%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALLThe second task is not very hard
either. I bring up the graphical (yes, I'm cheating) user configuration
tool and select my user account and press the "Properties" button, then
select the "Groups" tab on the properties dialog. Scrolling to the
bottom of the list, check the box labeled "wheel":Press OK and we're
done!Here are a couple of questions for all you geniuses out there:
- How would you add yourself to a group using only the command line
tools?
- What is the history and meaning the "wheel" group?Have fun!

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Posted By William Shotts to LinuxCommand.org: News And Rants at
1/29/2009 08:41:00 PM