[SOLVED] sudo vs. calife

newbiesforever · 08-22-2010, 02:19 PM

While looking for something else in Synaptic, I saw a program called Calife. The description says:

Quote:

Calife is a lightweight alternative to Sudo.
It allows selected users to obtain a shell with the identity
of root, or another user, after entering their own password.
This permits the system administrator to grant root privileges
without sharing the root password.

Does anyone use this program? Why would I want it instead of sudo? I installed it and tried using it to see what would happen, but it just kept saying "Calife failed. Sorry, trying to run su." Just curious.

crts · 08-22-2010, 02:45 PM

Hi,

other than the claim that it is more lightweight (less powerful?) than sudo I really do not see any significant difference to sudo. sudo also allows you to login as another user (including root) by providing your own password. AFAIK this is one major difference to su which requires the target users password.
As for why it fails:
probably because the configuration file /etc/calife.auth is not properly configured. You will have to add yourself to the calife users. But I really do not know how.
Try
man 5 calife.auth
for further info on that.

So after seeing that it does similiar (maybe less?) things as sudo and also in a similiar way the only answer to your question
Why would I want it instead of sudo?
would be: You probably don't.
However, I also just downloaded it to have a look at it. And it did not convince me.

Hope this helps a little.

newbiesforever · 08-22-2010, 04:53 PM

It did, thank you.