Invoking sudo at the command line in CentOS.
Superuser Do (sudo) is an open source security tool that allows an administrator to give specific users or groups the ability to run certain commands as root or as another user. Its name is a concatenation of “su” (substitute user) and “do”. Sudo is available for download from http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/download.html, but it is included with most Linux distributions. The program can also log commands and arguments entered by specified system users.
Unlike the su command, users typically supply their own password to sudo rather than the root password. The developers of sudo state the basic philosophy of the program is to give as few privileges as possible but still allow people to get their work done. After authentication, and if the /usr/local/etc/sudoers (or /etc/sudoers) configuration file permits the user access, then the system will invoke the requested command. The sudoers configuration file enables a huge amount of configurability, including, but not limited to: enabling root commands only from the invoking terminal, not requiring a password for certain commands; requiring a password per user or group; requiring re-entry of a password every time or never requiring a password at all for a particular command line. It can also be configured to permit passing arguments or multiple comments, and even supports commands with regular expressions.
Sudo was originally written by Robert Coggeshall and Cliff Spencer “around 1980″ at the Department of Computer Science at SUNY/Buffalo. The current license is under active development and is maintained by OpenBSD developer Todd C. Miller distributed under a BSD-style license. Sudo’s website is http://www.sudo.ws/.
sudo Features
Here are some of the features of sudo:
- Command logging: Commands and argument can be logged. Commands entered can be traced to the user. Ideal for system auditing.
- Centralized logging of multiple systems: sudo can be used with the system log daemon (syslog) to log all commands to a central host.
- Command restrictions: Each user or group of users can be limited to what commands they are allowed to enter on the system.
- Ticketing system: The ticketing system sets a time limit by creating a ticket when a user logs on to sudo. The ticket is valid for a configurable amount of time. The default is five minutes.
- Centralized administration of multiple systems: The sudo configurations are written to the /etc/sudoers files. The file can be used on multiple systems and allows administration from a central host. The file is designed to allow user privileges on a host-by-host basis.
Because sudo logs all commands run as root, many administrators use it instead of using the root shell. This allows them to log their own commands for troubleshooting and additional security. The ticketing system is also ideal because if the root user walks away from the system while still logged in, another user cannot then access the system simply because they have physical access to the keyboard. After the ticket expires, users must then log on to the system again. A shorter time is recommended, such as the default five minutes. The ticketing system also allows user to remove their ticket file.
To install and run sudo from the source distribution, you must have a system running Unix. Almost all versions of Unix support the sudo source distribution, including almost all flavors of POSIX, BSD, and SYSV. Sudo is known to run on: Auspex, SunOS, Solaris, ISC, RISCos, SCO, HP-UX, Ultrix, IRIX, NEXTSTEP, DEC Unix, AIX, ConvesxOS, BSD/OS, OpenBSD, Linux, UnixWare, Pyramid, ATT, SINIX, ReliantUNIX, NCR, Unicos, DG/UX, Dynix/ptx, DC-Osx, HI-UX/MPP, SVR4, NonStop-UX and MacOSX Server.
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