Sudo
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The first sudo blog...

Let me tell you a personal story, how this blog was born.

First a bit of introduction. I am Peter Czanik, working for the past nine years as syslog-ng evangelist at Balabit. Obviously I also deal with the commercial variant, but my focus is Open Source. That is one of the reasons why I was very happy to learn that Todd Miller, developer of the sudo application, became my colleague when Balabit was acquired by One Identity last year.

As a sysadmin I used sudo for many years. On the other hand I only knew its basic functionality, just like most of its users: as a prefix for administrative commands. Of course learning that an Open Source application installed virtually on all Linux systems is developed by one of my colleagues made me very interested in sudo. I read most of the sudo website and the sudo mastery book from Michael W Lucas, so I quickly learned that sudo is a lot more than just a prefix.

And I also learned that there are many similarities between sudo and syslog-ng:

  • Open Source
  • decades-long history
  • base system functionality
  • plugin-based architecture
  • commercial extensions – provided by One Identity
  • most people only know the very basics

These are the reasons why next to syslog-ng I started to work on sudo topics as well. I already had a couple of conference talks demonstrating some of the lesser-known features of sudo. And now I’m also starting a blog series, each time trying to introduce a hidden gem of sudo to you. As Open Source evangelist at One identity, my focus is Open Source, but occasionally you might also see content about other software by One Identity related to sudo, including commercial extensions to sudo.

As someone with a strong Open Source background, I am aware that mentioning commercial software rings alarm bells for many of you. I would be worried as well, if one of my Open Source application’s website started to mention commercial software. So, here are a few things, that will not change with the new sudo blog:

  • Even if both Todd and I work for One Identity, sudo stays the personal project of Todd Miller, development and maintenance of sudo does not change
  • Private data, like e-mail addresses from mailing list registrations stay with Todd. Of course, if you follow a link for a commercial product on the One Identity website, it is a different story.

I hope you will enjoy the blog just as I enjoy writing it. I plan to post something each month, depending on my time and topics. I have ideas what to cover for the next couple of blogs, but if you have any interesting topics, just let me know. You can reach me on LinkedIn or Twitter and I am open for suggestions.

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