Root and Sudo

Sudoers

I mentioned the Sudoers file briefly in the main Linux write up, but here we will go more in depth about it. Here is a typical Sudoers file:

Defaults	env_reset
Defaults	mail_badpass
Defaults	secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"

# This fixes CVE-2005-4890 and possibly breaks some versions of kdesu
# (#1011624, https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=452532)
Defaults	use_pty

# This preserves proxy settings from user environments of root
# equivalent users (group sudo)
#Defaults:%sudo env_keep += "http_proxy https_proxy ftp_proxy all_proxy no_proxy"

# This allows running arbitrary commands, but so does ALL, and it means
# different sudoers have their choice of editor respected.
#Defaults:%sudo env_keep += "EDITOR"

# Completely harmless preservation of a user preference.
#Defaults:%sudo env_keep += "GREP_COLOR"

# While you shouldn't normally run git as root, you need to with etckeeper
#Defaults:%sudo env_keep += "GIT_AUTHOR_* GIT_COMMITTER_*"

# Per-user preferences; root won't have sensible values for them.
#Defaults:%sudo env_keep += "EMAIL DEBEMAIL DEBFULLNAME"

# "sudo scp" or "sudo rsync" should be able to use your SSH agent.
#Defaults:%sudo env_keep += "SSH_AGENT_PID SSH_AUTH_SOCK"

# Ditto for GPG agent
#Defaults:%sudo env_keep += "GPG_AGENT_INFO"

# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# User privilege specification
root	ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%sudo	ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

# See sudoers(5) for more information on "@include" directives:

brendan ALL = (root)

@includedir /etc/sudoers.d