Is there a way to require a user to wait a certain time instead of asking for a password every time he wants to execute a command as root or access the root / or another user account?
sure. first, configure sudo to be passwordless, or perhaps just to stay unlocked for longer (it’s easy to find instructions for how to do that).
then, put this in your
~/.bashrc
:alias sudo='echo -n "are you sure? "; for i in $(seq 5); do echo -n "$((6 - $i)) "; sleep 1; done && echo && /usr/bin/sudo '
Now “sudo” will give you a 5 second countdown (during which you can hit ctrl-c if you change your mind) before running whatever command you ask it to.
What purpose should this fulfil? If you are unsure whether your command is correct, double-check it before hitting the ENTER key.
Sure, though I advice against. The following C program can do that:
#include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <unistd.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { if (argc < 2) { fprintf(stderr, "usage: %s <command> <args>...", argv[0]); return EXIT_FAILURE; } printf("Executing"); for (int i = 1; i < argc; ++i) { printf(" %s", argv[i]); } puts("\n^C to abort"); sleep(5); if (setuid(0)) { perror("setuid"); return EXIT_FAILURE; } execvp(argv[1], argv + 1); perror("exec: /sbin/lilo"); return EXIT_FAILURE; }
As seen in:
$ gcc -O2 -o delay-su delay-su.c $ sudo chown root:sudo delay-su $ sudo chmod 4750 delay-su $ ./delay-su id $ id -u 1000 $ ./delay-su id -u Executing id -u ^C to abort 0
This will allow anyone in group
sudo
to execute any command as root. You may change the group to something else to control who exactly can run the program (you cannot change the user of the program).If there’s some specific command you want to run, it’s better to hard-code it or configure
sudo
to allow execution of that command without password.Do you mean the delay between when you need to re-enter the superuser password?
I found this via an LLM:
To change the delay before needing to re-enter your
sudo
password, follow these steps:-
Open the terminal and run:
sudo visudo
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Locate the line:
Defaults env_reset
-
Add the following line below it:
Defaults timestamp_timeout=<time-in-minutes>
Replace
<time-in-minutes>
with the desired timeout in minutes (e.g.,30
for 30 minutes). Setting it to0
requires a password every time, while a negative value disables the timeout entirely.
I’m curious, why do people make these comments? If the op wanted an answer from an LLM, they would have asked an LLM…
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This would literally render sudo utterly useless. Sudo is meant to require password to accomplish admin tasks. In your scenario anyone using your computer can do anything without knowing the password.
This is not entirely accurate; there are plenty of times when sudo does not require a password even in the default config. And there’s the nopasswd option built-in already which would already do that portion of this request.
It sounds like the OP wants to use sudo as a Molly-guard. There’s nothing wrong with that, although it may not be the right tool for the job.