sudo-sh reverted to simpler design

October 25, 2025 — BarryK

sudo-sh is a simple replacement for sudo, see the history:

With version 1.2, an indirect ipc mechanism was introduced, based on the situation of 'sudo-sh' binary executing non-root, despite having its SUID bit set. That was said to have happened, but I'm not convinced. Whatever, that situation is invalid, and it would be reasonable for sudo or its replacement to just fail.

The ipc mechanism required an intermediary daemon, running via /root/Startup/sudo-sh-ipc. That is now removed. Good, it was a hack anyway.

'sudo-sh' is now version 2.0 and the source uploaded here:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/source/alphabetical/s/

There is also a new PET:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/packages/pet/pet_packages-excalibur/

There is also a script /usr/bin/sudo, which is a thin wrapper that calls sudo-sh.

The way it works, is /usr/bin/sudo-sh has owner:group root:root and permissions 4711, the "4" meaning the SUID bit is set, so any app that calls it, running non-root, sudo-sh will run as the root user. It will call script /usr/bin/sudo.sh, which will put up a GUI window asking for the password.

Tags: easy