[Linux-disciples] Sudoer

[Stephen R Laniel]

On Wed, May 31, 2006 at 01:54:54PM -0400, Jason Smith wrote:
> So, is it generally a bad idea to modify these text files directly??  
> How do you know which you can and which you can't??

It's not an awful idea, but it's certainly *easier*, at
least, to use various tools. To add a user user, for
instance, you don't modify /etc/passwd and /etc/groups
directly, though I suppose you could. You just use
'adduser'. Likewise for adding groups ('addgroup'), editing
/etc/sudoers ('visudo'), etc. Likewise, 'getent passwd' will
list the contents of the password file, taking into account
LDAP, NIS, and so on and so forth; 'getent groups' will do
the same for all groups.

Moral: if you know which tools will let you modify system
files, use them instead; if you don't, try editing files
directly.

-- 
Stephen R. Laniel
steve at laniels.org
Cell: +(617) 308-5571
http://laniels.org/
PGP key: http://laniels.org/slaniel.key
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