sudo sometimes fails for me

[Clinton MacDonald]

Patrick:

Thank you for your clear (and rapid!) explanation.

Patrick Smith wrote:
> Clinton MacDonald wrote:
>> It would seem that there was a bug in sudo, such that it assigned a 
>> process ID to synaptic *before* asking for my password, then revealed 
>> the rest of the transaction in clear text.
> 
> sudo didn't reveal your password. You did.

That's it, blame the poor newbie! :-) However, one can imagine that what 
I typed seemed like the perfectly natural thing to do.

> The & says 'run "sudo synaptic"' in the background. So now you have two 
> processes running: sudo, that wants your password, and your shell, that 
> wants a command (hence the shell prompt on the same line as Password).

Okay that makes sense. I don't like it, but it makes sense. :-(

I still argue that the shell/sudo combination should be smarter. Anytime 
it asks for a password, it should *NEVER* reveal it in plain text. 
Otherwise, in this age of keyboard recording spyware and such, it 
shouldn't even pretend to be secure. It could fail gracefully (or not 
gracefully), but *NEVER* reveal that password.

Hmmphf. Who's in charge of these things? ;-)

> If you really want to do this, try instead
> 
>     sudo sh -c 'synaptic&'

Alright, that looks interesting. I have no idea what it means, but I 
will certainly give it a try. Like many of my mistakes, it will give me 
an opportunity to learn something new.

Thanks!

Best wishes,
Clint
("Linux: more than enough rope.")

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT net>