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The Ubuntu 26.04 Rust sudo is not compatible with standard sudo

53 points wondersky 3 days ago 37 comments

orf 2 days ago | parent

Sudoers glob expressions are a horrible footgun and I have little empathy for anyone complaining about their removal, especially when it’s trivial to fix with 3 extra (explicit) lines.

Vaushite 2 days ago | parent

Tools have to be allowed to evolve. Half the Linux ecosystem's problems are caused by sticking on some design that made sense in 1980.

At least the command is still called sudo or run0. Changing it to doas would have been a much more breaking change.

Alas, TFA blocks me with no workaround because I'm using Tor Browser so I can't read about the nature of the changes.

bikvfeee 2 days ago | parent

To many of us it's not about the features which you obliquely refer to when you say "evolve" but about licensing. It's extremely concerning that we're replacing GPL stuff for non GPL, and just as concerning that so many folks don't recognise this point.

Vaushite 1 day ago | parent

Licensing is downstream of software existing. The person who actually writes software gets to make the license. If you want a GPL one you have to make that.

bikvfeee 21 hours ago | parent

It already exists.

Vaushite 18 hours ago | parent

Is it better?

cpach 15 minutes ago | parent

Where…?

lakeviewterrace 27 minutes ago | parent

This is by design.

They are slow-rolling the cancellation of Stallman's connection to the OS because their first attempt failed.

In 10 years, no one will have heard of GNU after all components have been replaced with corporate clones.

tomkarho 20 minutes ago | parent

I find it hard to believe that all of this movement is because of Stallman. That seems so... petty.

fwip 17 minutes ago | parent

Less Stallman and more the GPL. Companies hate it.

ForHackernews 19 minutes ago | parent

Maybe the GPL people need to get with the times, then. LLVM exists largely because the GCC people were so obstinate. I'm a big believer in copyleft software, but it only works if people want to use your software with their projects.

ahartmetz 10 minutes ago | parent

LLVM was supposed to be a virtual machine initially, hence the (original) name: Low-level virtual machine. The direction that it took, and especially the development of Clang: that was at least partially because of GCC's intentional anti-modularity.

lakeviewterrace 30 minutes ago | parent

> Tools have to be allowed to evolve.

Great, then give it a new name.

> At least the command is still called sudo or run0

You're happy it's a knockoff?

> would have been a much more breaking change

All these "Rust rewrite" projects are creating breaking changes all over the place, whilst solving no real problems. They can shove them up their arses.

novafunc 27 minutes ago | parent

It’s not a knockoff. They have a friendly relationship with the original creator of sudo. And their work helps uncover bugs of the original sudo so they send fixes upstream.

lakeviewterrace 24 minutes ago | parent

All the time wasted on navel-gazing could have been spent auditing and fixing the original projects' code.

Starting anew WILL introduce new bugs. This is a statistical certainty.

Most Rust rewrites are justified upon imaginary boogeymen. The complex security nightmares of 'cp' 'ls' and 'rm' were begging for a new design.

danielheath 19 minutes ago | parent

One would never return “*” to signal an error in rust code (or any language with an option type).

lakeviewterrace 13 minutes ago | parent

Rust can't even self-host on most of the architectures that abortion of a library was written for.

Holy fuck are Rust people all petty activists?

Stop spending every waking minute telling everyone how great it is and making knockoff clones of 40 year old software and go solve new problems.

Twirrim 13 minutes ago | parent

Friendly relationship or not, the end user experience is that something that was working, no longer is, because it's not feature compatible. This is despite it being used to replace it under the same name. If it had been `runas` or anything else it'd be fine.

There's a strong principle in upstream Linux kernel about "You don't break userspace"[1], that I really wish more folks would get into their heads, but most especially a variant "You don't subtly break userspace".

If you're going to replace an existing binary, under the same name, you need to be like-for-like in commands, even if your guts are completely different. Very few people give a damn about how it's actually implemented, just does it do what they need it to do.

If you want to do things differently, do it under a different name and have it be an explicit break for an end user by not shipping with the original and let people choose to install it if they really don't want the new thing. Breaking things subtly is completely unacceptable.

[1] espoused really clearly, as part of an infamous rant https://lore.kernel.org/all/CA+55aFy98A+LJK4+GWMcbzaa1zsPBRo...

mtmail 26 minutes ago | parent

> TFA blocks me with no workaround

I hope this copy works https://pastebin.com/mxAZyQJL (I was surprised the website even blocked archive.ph with "suspicious old browser")

jms703 15 minutes ago | parent

Yes, they do. Put them into your stable server distribution AFTER they are complete.

graemep 13 minutes ago | parent

If you read the article you would know this is a regression, not an improvement. Stuff breaking silently is never good. If you change config options error when you read the config file that no longer works.

bikvfeee 2 days ago | parent

Could someone remind me why people use Ubuntu?

I remember 20 years ago Ubuntu was marginally more user friendly. Is it the power of inertia? Ubuntu is just Debian actively made worse.

p4ul 21 minutes ago | parent

Yes, I would guess that a combination of inertia and network effects explain Ubuntu's prevalence.

mminer237 18 minutes ago | parent

Ubuntu typically has more packages available and newer versions of them, besides supporting PPAs and Snaps to expand the easily available software.

Also, Gnome and KDE are both horribly unintuitive for newcomers. Ubuntu makes a several tweaks to Gnome to make it more user-friendly. Debian just gives a list of names and says to choose one or more.

It is mostly just inertia though.

ahartmetz 8 minutes ago | parent

From my experience, Kubuntu barely changes anything about KDE these days, and that's a good thing, too. I compile my own KDE on my usual machines, but I also have stock Kubuntu on one, and it's pretty much the same.

poszlem 17 minutes ago | parent

One reason is that we have a lot of developers who get into programming in the last 10 years. Ubuntu was catering directly to "beginners". Many people who only used Ubuntu because they wanted "a linux" never really reconsidered and just use what they know (and often don't even know there are other options).

Twirrim 9 minutes ago | parent

There's a lot of inertia. That is leading to various major companies shipping their software for, and only supporting, Ubuntu, and if you're lucky Red Hat.

davb 26 minutes ago | parent

Further validation of our decision to move to Debian (as if the sluggish kernel updates and ramming of snaps down our throats weren’t enough). We migrated a few hundred lab machines this summer, and have around half of our servers and containers switched over. It has gone very smoothly.

foxhill 5 minutes ago | parent

i set up a bunch of machines at my new place. ubuntu.

my weekend project is moving them over to debian.

it pains me, ubuntu used to be “the” linux i would point people to. the “un-fuckup-able” thing people should try if they’re switching.

jmclnx 24 minutes ago | parent

Seems in Linux land, compatibly, even between distros, is going out the window. :(

Individuals can deal with that, but companies will have a hard time. You would think the Linux Foundation (LF) would chime in with all these differences. But they seem more concerned with AI than Linux these days.

If it was up to me, I would standardize on OpenBSD's doas, but me doing that would make for more incompatibilities.

ikmckenz 12 minutes ago | parent

If they were going to make breaking changes anyways, they should have just switched to the much simpler `doas`

bravetraveler 11 minutes ago | parent

Ah, but then you don't get to skip editing docs, proclaim walking on a tightrope, or make a new TiVo.