On Sun, Feb 05, 2012 at 05:21:47PM -0500, Sébastien Leblanc wrote: > Myself being a non-vi user, I find that visudo is hard for people used > to nano. Besides, use of visudo is only critical for systems where no > one knows the root password (default Ubuntu for example). If you know > the root password and are on a generally single user system where > there is no risk that two people would be modifying the sudoers file > at the same time, don't be afraid to edit /etc/sudoers with nano. If > you manage to break sudo, you can always fix it with su -c "nano > /etc/sudoers" and by typing the root password. visudo(8) does more than locking. It performs basic syntax checks after editing and tells you if (and where) any errors were found. It's the right tool for this job, so why bother with workarounds if using another editor is as simple as setting "$VISUAL" or "$EDITOR" (which you should do in your shell rc file anyway if you're not used to using vi(1))? Furthermore, it's pretty usual that only very few (to none) users know the root password, even if there's a larger number of privileged users. > > -- > Sébastien Leblanc
