[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#739657: gnuhealth-server: fails to install: gnuhealth-server.postinst: sudo: not found

[Emilien Klein]

Hi Andreas,

Le 23 févr. 2014 22:30, "Andreas Tille" <andreas at an3as.eu> a écrit :
>
> Hi Emilien,
>
> On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 09:49:46PM +0100, Emilien Klein wrote:
> > 2014-02-23 19:53 GMT+01:00 Karsten Hilbert <Karsten.Hilbert at gmx.net>:
> > >
> > > On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 08:38:56AM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > >
> > > > > Extract from the manpages:
> > > > > sudo:
> > > > > sudo, sudoedit - execute a command as another user
> > > >
> > > > I'd call this a bit confusing since sudo is the command to do
something
> > > > as superuser.
> > >
> > > Not really. It just so happens that the *default*
> > > target usually is root.
> > >
> > > Look at "-u username".
> >
> >
> > Correct, sudo is to perform a command as another user (by default
> > root, but it can be any user you which), while su is to 'become" that
> > other user (and then likely perform commands as that other user).
> >
> > Only those few commands (in different scripts) need to be performed as
> > the database-owning user, all the rest of the process needs to be done
> > by root. Using sudo is the correct way to do that.
> > I will make sure to Depend on sudo.
>
> As I tried to express this is *not* the correct conclusion in my
> opinion.

Yes, I understand what you are saying.

> You should use su in your scripts.

OK, but why?
What I'm missing so far is an explanation on why we shouldn't use sudo for
this use-case.

> May be you are trying
> to grep /var/lib/dpkg/info for the usage of su / sudo to get some
> picture what others are doing.

Following the Unix philosophy of using a collection of specialized small
tools that do one thing best, when performing an action as another user it
seems to be the correct thing to use a tool that "execute a command as
another user" rather than one whose primary goal is "change user ID or
become superuser"

I would be in complete agreement to not use that tool if it was either new
or obscure, but I don't think this can be said of sudo.

Should I ask the -devel mailing list to help us get out of our confusion?

Have a great start of your week.
    +Emilien
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