Thanx for the explanation :) I decided to make my usual user a Primary 
Administrator, and I can
pfexec anything ;)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Da: Gregory Youngblood
A: Discussion list for OpenIndiana
Data: 14 giugno 2011 23.24.10 CEST
Oggetto: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] User roles and acting as root
On Jun 14, 2011, at 1:35 PM, Gabriele Bulfon wrote:
Up until OpenSolaris, my first and only command was some "enters" on a "#".
Just root, and just commands, for a life.
Now I had times with opensolaris wanting me to pfexec everything.
On OpenIndiana pfexec behave differently and does not run privileged as it did 
on OSol.
And, afterall, sudo just asks for your password once, and it's done forever....
At least for the "first" user you configure on OI.
Where is security here??
sudo "remembers" that you entered your password, and as long as you repeat 
additional sudo command within the allowable time period, you do not have to 
enter the password again. However, if you wait until that allowable time period 
expires then sudo will prompt you for a password again (unless you changed 
sudoers to not prompt for passwords again).
I don't know why (I remember reading about it, but have since forgotten) why 
pfexec in OI behaves differently than it did for OS. It didn't matter to me 
since sudo worked, but I preferred pfexec since I had become accustomed to 
using it in OS, so I usually make my user primary administrator so pfexec works 
again. It's a bit of a 2x4 approach, but it makes me happy. I'm sure there are 
better/more elegant ways to accomplish the same thing.
As for why I prefer pfexec to sudo, I don't really have a clear, rational 
answer. It's my understanding pfexec works within the solaris/oi roles system 
while sudo is just a pure password privilege escalation. I probably have that 
wrong, so welcome correction.
As for security from sudo - it all depends on how you use it. In the default 
form as installed the password has to be used to escalate privileges initially 
and for a limited window of time. Assuming any compromise is not the result of 
password compromise, it slows down the attacker's effectiveness. Where sudo 
really shines, imo, is the ability to designate safe commands that others can 
run.
Consider a group of developers given access to a test or staging server. The 
developers are not given carte blanche to do anything they want on the server, 
but they do need the ability to restart some app or service, such as apache. 
Using sudo you can allow them to do "apachectl start", "apachectl restart", 
"apachectl graceful", and "apachectl configtest" as the super user, without 
permitting them to run any other command or apachectl with any other options 
than the ones listed. It's a powerful tool for being able to fine tune exactly 
what commands and options users are allowed to do with escalated privileges.
Greg
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