103
Is there an advantage of using doas over sudo
(thelemmy.club)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
103 points (95.6% liked)
Linux
48376 readers
2129 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
From what I hear, doas is more secure. I don't think it matters though, as long as you keep your system updated. I use sudo still.
It's really only more secure in the sense that in general more complicated programs have more things that can go wrong with them. Either bugs, or just user error.
That is a valid concern, and most people don't need or use any of sudo's extra features, so it's completely reasonable to switch to doas because of that, but it's not like there's some glaring security flaw in sudo that most people really need to worry about. Especially if they're not doing weird things in the config, which would mostly be the same people who could easily switch to doas anyway.
Thank you I think I will stick with sudo.
How is it more secure?
Afaik much smaller code base and as such easier to audit.
I think it's because sudo only requires a password the first time on each shell.
sudo maintains ‘sudo state’ for 15 minutes. After that you need to enter the password again.
15 minutes that's good to know thanks.
It is a configurable value so don't rely on it being 15 minutes everywhere.
TIL, thanks for this info
It's entirely configurable but I think by default sudo will "cache" your authentication for a period of time so multiple commands in the same session only need the password entered once. You can even configure sudo to not need a password for certain commands (although obviously you need to be careful you're not opening a hole in your security).
doas is likewise configurable; though the mechanism that keeps track of the timeout is different on OpenBSD (where doas originated) & Linux ---- and there used to be some reservations about the latter implementation.