Ubuntu – Why is a user with root privileges not in ~ anymore

rootsudo

Just out of curiosity, I would like to know why, when I log in as root, I am not in /home/user anymore. What's the reason and what does /root directory do exactly?

I'm not an advanced user. Please answer in simple words or give a link that provides clear-cut, simple explanations. I use Ubuntu 16.04 and I log in as root by sudo -i. As it's explained here, sudo -i has /root as home. I want to know what the reason is; is there any advantage to be there? And not in ~ like the user of sudo -s.

Best Answer

You are not logging as root by running a sudo command. You are starting a shell with root privileges.

If you want to stay in the current user home directory, you can use sudo -s instead of sudo -i command.

cd ~ will take you to the same directory as if you are not in a shell with root privileges. Literally /home/$USER.

When you use sudo -i, the system acts as if you are logged in as root user. Because of this

cd ~

brings you to the root user home directory that is /root.

/root directory is a home directory for the root user.

The main difference is that shell settings files like .bashrc are used from /root in case of sudo -i, and from a normal user in case of sudo -s.

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Ubuntu – Run script at user login as root, with a catch

Do not put the script in the user's home directory. Instead, put it in a fixed location. If the script needs some user-dependent arguments, make the script read that from a file — but you don't even need that since you're copying the script from /etc/skel anyway.

If you allow a user to run a script in their home directory with elevated privileges, then they can replace the script by another script. So your proposed rule would be equivalent from a security point of view to

ALL ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /etc/skel/createSambaShare.php
MANY ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

where MANY is any user whose home directory is under /home/DOMAIN. (Ok, unless a user's home directory is owned by root, not writable to the user, and the script is not writable by or owned by the user either. But that would be pretty unusual.)

Also, I recommend not using ALL in a User specification. Restrict the rule to a group.

%sambasharers ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/createSambaShare.php

Ubuntu – Sudo comes up with an error, cannot run anything as root

If you can login as root:

$ su root     #enter password
$ chmod 644 /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so
$ chown -R root /usr/lib/sudo

If not, you'll have to startup in recovery mode, get write permission on your disk, and change the mode of that file. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RecoveryMode

$ mount -o remount,rw /
$ chmod 644 /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so

Best Answer

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