su/sudo using ssh auth

John E Hein jhein at timing.com
Sat Nov 3 06:00:41 EST 2001


Todd C. Miller wrote at 10:55 -0700 on Nov  2:
 > I have resisted doing this because I really think it is pointless.
 > 
 > The only reason sudo authenticates at all is to guard against a
 > lack of physical security.  Using the ssh agent would not protect
 > against thins since the passphrase is only entered once.  If you
 > don't want to enter a password in sudo, just turn off authentication
 > and rely on whatever method was used to login.

But I do want to have to enter a password, for instance, at the start of
 a long running build script that needs to occasionally have root
 privs at a number of strategic points in the script to do some
 building in a chroot or mount a flash device.

When the script ends (successfully or otherwise), the sudo credential
 for the script and its children would go away.

Without such a feature (and without turning off sudo authentication),
 one would have to periodically revisit the script and re-enter
 one's password.

I hope this example illustrates the utility of a sudo-agent type
 of feature.  An authentication more fine grained than login level
 authentication is desired.

As someone suggested, Kerberos tickets might be a good way to go - I've
 never used them.



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