Su Su Sudeo?

[lxskllr]

Ok, my title sucks, but maybe the thread will be better :^D

You guys that run a root account, do you also use a sudoers file? If so, why? I setup my Debian install with a root account because... Well, just because. I never bothered to put myself in the sudoers list. If I need root access, I login as root to do what I need. Should I setup sudo? Is there a benefit?

 

[Red Squirrel]

For servers, I just login as a basic user (I usually don't allow root logon directly) ,then su as root to do what I need. I find it's easier than using sudo every time or trying to deal with a suduer's list.

For my workstation I do all my work as the user that was created at install time, and it seems the sudoer's stuff was presetup so I don't really have to do anything extra. I'll su as root to do system changes though but most everyday things I can do without root.

 

[themillak]

when i used ubuntu i used whatever their default was, so i guess no login-as-root and sudo. on my systems now I use su for all my root needs. I'm sure there's more to it than ease/familiarity but I've been bitten by relatively small '/' partitions and deleting things as root and finding them in the root trash, taking up all my space. every time i do that i end up fixing it some other way, half the time with some root nautilus action which can't possibly be the best option. learning it from ubuntu, to me sudo says "i really mean it, just do it this time" and to me just feels like the wrong way to go about doing things.

for VMs though i use sudo. i don't normally keep a linux VM for more than a week though.

 

[mv2devnull]

For security point of view both logging in as root and doing operations as root are both dangerous.

When you cannot log in as root, neither graphically nor remotely, that does leave only the su and sudo (Redhat-based systems have a "runuser" command too, probably a variation of su introduced along with the selinux). Like themillak said, sudo is both explicit and minimizes the commands that you give as root. Unlike Ubuntu, the RH-based distros don't have sudoers by default, even though it's a simple edit.

That said, I tend to log in via virtual console (if someone else has an X session) or have su session in xterm. Keeping bash_history is a risk too, but oh so convenient.

 

[weovpac]

Like others have said, try not to login as root directly use su -l or sudo -i. I prefer to just use su -l when I need root access. I do have a my user in the /etc/sudoers.d/10_local file to only be able to shutdown the machine.