[HN Gopher] Doas Mastery (2016)
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       Doas Mastery (2016)
        
       Author : nesarkvechnep
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2023-06-13 04:58 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (flak.tedunangst.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (flak.tedunangst.com)
        
       | PreInternet01 wrote:
       | So, I've found `doas` to be a great firewall against not-so-
       | competent sysadmins, in addition to all the other safety
       | guarantees it brings.
       | 
       | -Ehm, I try to `sudo X` and it says command not found
       | 
       | -Yup, that's by design. Try `doas X`
       | 
       | -Well, I tried sudo again and it just doesn't work. What is the
       | root password? I need this, like, an hour ago. Do the
       | needfull!!1!
       | 
       | -Sure, have your manager call me...
        
         | arp242 wrote:
         | Wait, are you saying there are people who can't process "you
         | need to replace the word sudo with doas and then it will work
         | exactly the same"?
        
           | PreInternet01 wrote:
           | Yes. Really.
           | 
           | And I guess I can't really blame them. Their mental modal is:
           | I need to run `sudo X`. Because, well, that's what the
           | runbook-they-got-from-their-previous-job, Google, or ChatGPT
           | says.
           | 
           | The response they get does not get them any nearer to being
           | able to run `sudo X`. So, they get angry, and push back.
           | Unless you can get someone to sit down, reflect, and think
           | about _what they really want to achieve_ , this is a
           | situation that is very hard to resolve.
           | 
           | So, that's one more reason I love `doas`: it leads to, eh,
           | valuable conversations.
        
             | rcoveson wrote:
             | This is why I alias `ls` to `dd` and vice versa on all the
             | systems I admin.
        
               | somat wrote:
               | You joke, but I found something like this in the wild. It
               | was an old legacy sco system been around forever and I
               | was asked to do some maintenance work on it. It used rsh
               | to talk to other machines. But I was having a hell of a
               | hard time finding the rsh command. After a lot of pouring
               | over script sources I found it had been renamed to
               | something else. when I asked their sysadmin WTF was going
               | on with this system. he said it had been done for
               | security. Which is still stupid but I have to admit it
               | may work against your normal "script of the month" style
               | attack. It certainly worked for me.
        
             | kjs3 wrote:
             | I think this says _way_ more about you than the teammates
             | you 're condescending to. I've never had someone "get
             | angry, and push back" when you simply and clearly explain
             | "things have changed here...X isn't the command you want
             | and you need to use Y, and here's how you do it". But I get
             | that a mentor-like approach doesn't let you polish you BOFH
             | creds and put the contemptable little people in their
             | place.
        
         | kstrauser wrote:
         | One time we hired someone who interviewed extremely well. They
         | were filling a compliance auditing role, but had credibly
         | talked a lot about their experience as a security engineer in a
         | Unix shop.
         | 
         | On their first day, I was helping them set up their laptop:
         | 
         | - You need to run `sudo X`
         | 
         | - types `X-but-misspelled`
         | 
         | - No, that's `sudo`, then `X`
         | 
         | - types `sudo_X-but-misspelled` (literally
         | `sudo`-underscore-`misspelled version of X`)
         | 
         | - I mean, with a space after `sudo`, like using sudo to run X.
         | 
         | - types `sudo_X`
         | 
         | - Have you used sudo?
         | 
         | - Finally types `sudo X`.
         | 
         | I saved a screenshot of our zoom so I could show our mutual
         | boss later. They ghosted us after a week.
         | 
         | Huh. A Unix security engineer who doesn't have sudo (or
         | presumably doas) in muscle memory? Interesting.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Discussed at the time:
       | 
       |  _Doas mastery_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12429050 -
       | Sept 2016 (15 comments)
        
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