Me neither - something just seems very wrong about elevating privileges with mere user credentials.

You can use sudo -i.

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If I am the only user on my machine I happily alternate between sudo and su (I trust myself). A multi-user machine may be a different scenario as I may not want a certain user to have the root password. Sudo allows me to decide what a particular user is able to do on the machine.
Each to his/her own.

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Well of course, want to switch user to root you will need that password.

Well of course, I know this and I do this for my backup user.

Well, it's your system. I use sudo for selected root task. I do NOT allow users to have blanket root access via sudo. I don't want other users to run for example installpkg. It is a bit of an inconvenience? Not at all.

I find this amusing, why even mention this.

As do I. I happen to like the Slackware default behavior of sudo as it is specifically regarding the path.

That trick will not work on my system unless you are in the wheel group. I quite often login a root directly (oh the horror) from the CLI.

I guess my "question" left you with the impression I don't know this. BTW, using 'su' will not provide an environment similar to what the user would expect had the user logged in directly. One must specifically use -, -l, -login to get that.

Where in my post did I tell others not to use there machines as they want to??? Maybe is what because I left off the question mark, I will go back and fix that. I asked a simple question that came to mind on reading the first few post. The OP would NOT have have encountered this problem running installpkg as root either directly or using 'su -'.

At any rate you answered my question. Thanks for that... I think.

You asked why and I provided an answer. You can configure sudo to not require anything extra, which makes it faster. That's why I use it. It's much faster to type sudo pkgtool instead of su - *type root password* pkgtool. Some may configure sudo to require their user password, which may not be as fast (depending on complexity of each password), and they may be using sudo for different reasons than I use sudo.

I am the only user on my system that is configured with sudo. I am in a house with me and my wife and my wife doesn't care about using my computer. Why not give myself access to run root commands without needing to type the root password (or any password for that matter) other than security reasons? If I were on a workstation or I had people at my house that I am worried might do things I don't want them to do, I'd configure my system's security differently, which would likely include changing my usage of sudo. That isn't the case right now, so simplicity rules.

Because sudo usage is a common thing that users from *buntus want to get set up since they're used to it. A lot of people who complain about sudo usage think it's an Ubuntu invention and hate it since Ubuntus removed the ability to log into root accounts by default. I started using sudo before I even knew what Ubuntu was and wanted to let you know that my desire to use it has nothing to do with the *buntus.

And there's nothing wrong with that. I appreciate the sane defaults selected by Pat. However, I change a lot of the defaults with Slackware.

Personally, I don't change the line I provided OP, because I modify my user's PATH to include all the locations root has access to. Problem solved there

Congrats. You have your system configured to your liking. I have my configured to my liking. I don't care that your preference is different than mine.

You specifically added root into your command, so I wanted to ensure you (and others reading) were aware it wasn't need. I didn't know that you knew otherwise and had no way to know that from your post. You are obviously aware that I understand the difference between a login shell and non-login (since I specifically stated I use sudo su -), so I'll just say that I appreciate your caricature.

[QUOTE=chrisretusn;6255293]Where in my post did I tell others not to use there machines as they want to??? Maybe is what because I left off the question mark, I will go back and fix that. I asked a simple question that came to mind on reading the first few post.

You questioned their usage even if you remove the question mark from your "question". There was no point to that. I decided to take your same question and reword a bit of it as a humorous thing to show that it's unneeded to question how someone uses their system. Apparently it was taken as an attack, which was not intended whatsoever.

Very true, but OP was not asking how to use su, so why even bring it up? Someone might not run into an issue with slackpkg if they just use installpkg, but that wasn't the point of the topic.

chris.willing put it much more succinctly than I did (but I have a hard time turning off verbose mode).

@bassmadrigal Thanks for the replies. I don't mind verbose mode, I tend to do the same.

Doing so, you're making root access trivially available to not just you, but any program or script that runs under your user. If you're ok with that risk, then so be it: you're basically going back to the old MS Windows model where every user was an administrator.

I'm not ok with that, but each to their own.

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Yes. I have run sudo without a password in the past, but, I now have my systems requiring a password for sudo. Privilege escalation isn't something I want.

Yes, I am aware of the security issues with it. A program or script would need to directly call sudo during execution. I'm not in the habit of running random scripts that I haven't at least looked over and it's unlikely (although possible, and I accept the risk) that the programs I use will use sudo without me being aware of it.

Okay. I prefer to remove attack points from my system to make it a bit more secure. Each to his/her own.

I have security software installed on my home router that blocks malware and phishing attempts from infected websites. I don't want to make it easy for bad actors to own my systems.
I suggest that the OP of this thread may wish to consider adopting sound security practices and use a password for sudo.

I understand many people's desire to keep their system more secure. I try and find a balance between security and usability that I'm comfortable with. Other people's comfort levels will lead to more secure systems and others will lead to less secure systems. My balance is also different when on my work computer vs my home desktop vs my laptop.