root (or sudo) access delay instead of password

[email protected]

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?

[email protected]

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.

[email protected]

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.

[email protected]

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
```
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 to 0 requires a password every time, while a negative value disables the timeout entirely.

[email protected]

@dontblink You would have to write a PAM module to do that

[email protected]

sure. first, configure sudo to be passwordless (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 before running whatever command you ask it to.

[email protected]

What purpose should this fulfil? If you are unsure whether your command is correct, double-check it before hitting the ENTER key.

[email protected]

I can’t find anything that quite fits your requirements.

Putting a NOPASSWD option on your sudo config should cover the removal of the password requirement, but this may be I’ll-advised; it is probably wiser to increase the timestamp_timeout duration.

The intentional delay is tougher, and for that it looks like you’d need to write a PAM module. pam_faildelay is very close to what you need, you’d just need to make it produce a delay on success as well as failure.

[email protected]

I'm curious, why do people make these comments? If the op wanted an answer from an LLM, they would have asked an LLM...

[email protected]

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.

[email protected]

Having to type sudo already acts as a moly-guard. Whatever OP wants to do I won’t stop them, but they are doing something strange.

? Offline

In terms of security, an alias can be easily overridden by a user who can even choose yo use another shell which will not read .bashrc.

So this solution cannot force/require the user to comply to the delay requirement.

I was thinking maybe with a PAM module the delay can be achieved but I haven't found one that readily does that. Maybe OP needs to implement one

[email protected]

"~~I found this via an LLM~~"

"Here's a made up answer"

[email protected]

There are plenty of ways to configure Linux to circumvent sudo. I've even seen people who log in as root by default. I do not, however, advise anyone to do that even if it's just, as you put it, a Molly Guard. It has prevented me personally from doing catastrophic things to my system on a number of occasions.

[email protected]

While I pretty much agree, I can definitely think of a few sporadic times doing sysadmin where things have gone so significantly wrong that an enforced sanity-check on every sudo command would have been appreciated.

[email protected]

pam_faildelay almost does it, but it only delays on auth failure. You would want something that delays on success. Might be almost as simple as “if not” on a check on pam_faildelay.

[email protected]

Yes; the command prefix that you're looking for is

shutdown now ; (followed by your sudo command if you wish)

It will provide the appropriate delay before using the root command via sudo or having logged again as root (sigh)!

[email protected]

A modern equivalent of let me google that for you, but a more obnoxious one

[email protected]

@deadcatbounce @dontblink That's the Linux version of "press ALT+F4 to enable cheatmode"

[email protected]

And did you verify this before posting?

agnos.is Forums

root (or sudo) access delay instead of password