Subject: Re: [bug#34005] [PATCH] system: Add sudoedit to %setuid-programs.

From: Meiyo Peng <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2019 20:06:27 +0800

Hi Ludovic,

Ludovic Courtès writes:

> Hi Meiyo,
>
> Meiyo Peng <[email-masked]> skribis:
>
>> This patch adds sudoedit to %setuid-programs.  Although sudoedit is
>> equivalent to "sudo -e" and sudo is already in %setuid-programs, I
>> prefer to type sudoedit in terminal.  sudoedit is a common command in
>> Linux distros.  I use it frequently.  It would be great if guix users
>> are not forced to fallback on "sudo -e".
>
> The problem I see is that on GuixSD /etc/sudoers is not supposed to be
> edited directly.  Instead, users are expected to specify ‘sudoers-file’
> in their OS config, which generates a read-only /etc/sudoers.
>
> Whatever changes you make manually to that file are lost upon reboot or
> reconfiguration.
>
> Thus I feel like we should discourage ‘sudo -e’, ’sudoedit’, and
> ‘visudo’ altogether.
>
> WDYT?

I agree we should discourage users to edit files in /etc that are
managed by guix.  These files will be overridden upon `guix system
reconfigure`, so user's modification will be lost.  They should change
these files in the guix way by using config.scm.

However, sudoedit can also be used to edit files in /media, /mnt, /opt,
/srv and /var.  These files require root priviledge to edit and they are
not managed by guix.  This is the main reason we need sudoedit.

Oh, I also use sudoedit to edit /etc/config.scm.

So, WDYT?

--
Meiyo Peng
https://www.pengmeiyu.com