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Date:      Fri, 4 Mar 2005 00:04:30 +0100
From:      "albi@scii.nl" <albi@scii.nl>
To:        Pietro Cerutti <pietro.cerutti@gmail.com>
Cc:        FreeBSD <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: sudo & su
Message-ID:  <20050304000430.23281834.albi@scii.nl>
In-Reply-To: <e572718c05030314475384d7e3@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <e572718c05030313394a3bb5f0@mail.gmail.com> <2F1BC4E1DAFE0EE0733135BA@utd49554.utdallas.edu> <e572718c05030314475384d7e3@mail.gmail.com>

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On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 22:47:09 +0000
Pietro Cerutti <pietro.cerutti@gmail.com> wrote:

> There isn't any NOPASSWD, but if I give the password the first time,
> sudo doesn't ask for it anymore in the next 5 min or so...
> 

see : man sudoers

the timestamp_timeout section

> I think I really misunderstood the purpose of sudo. I thought that it
> was used to automatically login as root, give a command, and log back
> out to user who invoked the command.

more or less, yes

> So what's the purpose of asking for the password of the actually
> logged in user?

with sudo you can allow normal users to do certain things without the
need for sharing the root-password

here are some examples :
http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/man/sudoers.html#examples



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