Trouble with Sudo

[Alaric]

I've recently reinstalled a server. I changed my main login's group trying to make it able to edit files inside of the server's /home/ftp directory who's group it set to ftpusers. Apparently I didn't do this right because now I can no longer use my sudo command. I can log into root via the recover mode install through grub, but I don't know how to rectify my mistake. Any ideas?

[anomie]

What does your /etc/sudoers file look like?

[Alaric]

hmm... that's wierd. The file's only three uncommented lines are

Defaults !lecture,tty_tickets,!fqdn
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

[dime]

Try adding:

<user> ALL=(ALL) ALL

[Alaric]

Umm... I'm running an ftp server (vsftpd) based on local users... Would that be a good idea? I'd prefer just having a single user be able to sudo and use him as an admin. The user I want to have this right is alaric. What would I add to make him the ONLY on who can use sudo?

[anomie]

Use the visudo program (do not edit sudoers directly).

alaric    ALL=ALL

On another topic...

I'm running an ftp server (vsftpd) based on local users... Would that be a good idea?

Not really. ftp authentication credentials are sent plain text, so allowing local user logins is probably a bad idea. That's a different topic than the sudoers problem, though.

[Alaric]

what i meant by that is that I have vsftpd set up so that it uses local users, they're not meant for anything other than the ftp server. Is it still a bad idea not to use virtual ones? Also, I heard about an option called ssl. If I enable that are the passwords still plain ASCII? Can windows ftp programs that are built into cmd handle ssl?

[anomie]

Is it still a bad idea not to use virtual ones?

It's not a good idea to use local accounts for ftp logins, even if that is their only purpose. You can mitigate the risks a bit by giving them a nologin shell.

Also, I heard about an option called ssl. If I enable that are the passwords still plain ASCII? Can windows ftp programs that are built into cmd handle ssl?

Yes, you can require authentication over ssl (and transfer over ssl if you'd like). This can all be set up with vsftpd. Then authentication info (and transfer data if you set it up that way) will be encrypted.

I'm sure there are some Windows clients that support FTPS (ftp over ssl).

[Alaric]

how secure is ssl? Is it like wep secure, or is it actually secure?

[anomie]

SSL / TLS had better be secure -- it's a very common way to encrypt http traffic (used by banks, credit card companies, etc.).

Lots of info at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ssl

WEP is a whole different matter. It really has nothing to do with http, ftp, or anything else we've talked about. (And it has known exploits.)