[tex-live] texhash not updating ls-R-TEXLIVEDIST

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Sun Dec 10 00:55:17 CET 2017


On 2017-12-08 at 23:20:55 +0100, Zdenek Wagner wrote:

 > 2017-12-08 22:45 GMT+01:00 Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de>:
 > 
 >     On 2017-12-08 at 08:58:52 -0500, gml at garymlewis.com wrote:
 > 
 > ...
 > 
 >     Whenever you invoke a command with sudo, a small typo can break
 >     the whole system.  Use sudo with care and avoid it whenever
 >     possible.  Always maintain your own stuff as a non-privileged
 >     user.
 > 
 > IMHO the whole concept of sudo is wrong and I never use it. It
 > allows unprivileged user to do privileged things. If you have your
 > own personal computer and do not share it with anybody, then it
 > makes no sense not to know the root password. You can then do "su
 > -" and enter the root password and you know that your actions are
 > potentially dangerous. If the computer is shared by several people
 > then it is stupid to give them the right to use sudo. A privileged
 > administrator should take care of the system setup, security etc,
 > other user should not have right to access system settings.  Thus
 > sudo with unlimited rights is wrong.

I'm not using sudo either, but I assume that the idea is to prevent
unexperienced users from being logged in as root permanently.  This is
a good idea, IMO.

I also use su(1) in order to maintain my system but I configured PS1
in /etc/bashrc so that I'm warned

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and similarly for Emacs

(if (> emacs-major-version 23)
    (if (= (user-uid) 0)
	(set-face-attribute
	 'mode-line nil :foreground "Yellow" :background "OrangeRed")
      (set-face-attribute
       'mode-line nil :foreground "Cyan" :background "Sienna"))
  ;; older Emacs:
  (if (= (user-uid) 0)
      (progn 
        (set-face-background 'modeline "OrangeRed")
        (set-face-foreground 'modeline "Yellow"))
    (progn
      (set-face-foreground 'modeline "Cyan")
      (set-face-background 'modeline "Sienna"))))

I've always a lot of X-terminals and Emacs instances running on
various virtual screens and it's very helpful if I can see immediately
who I am.

On multi-user systems sudo can be configured to allow a particular
user to run a particular program/script with root privileges.  This is
quite useful if an admin doesn't want to give the root password to a
user who only needs to run one or a few privileged programs.  

I'm convinced that sudo(1) is quite useful if configured properly, see
also sudo.conf(5), sudoers(5).  I must admit that I have absolutely no
experience with sudo.  The very first thing I do whenever I boot a new
Linux installation is

  sudo passwd

in order to proceed with su(1).  But I'm convinced that unexperienced
users shouldn't do that.  It's simply too dangerous to be logged in as
root permanently.  With my Bash and Emacs setup it's less risky.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
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