sudo (superuser do) is a computer program in Unix, Linux, and similar operating systems such as Mac OS X that allows users to run programs in the guise of another user (normally in the guise of the computer system s Superuser). It is currently maintained by Todd C. Miller, an OpenBSD developer.

=Usage=

By default and as a security measure, users who invoke sudo must supply their own password before running the target program. sudo authenticates users against their own password rather than that of the target user in order to allow the delegation of specific commands to specific users on specific hosts without sharing passwords among them and while mitigating the risk of any unattended terminals. Once authentication has taken place, the system updates a timestamp and the user may then use sudo without a password for a short period of time (five minutes unless overridden in /etc/sudoers).

=Configuration=

Access to sudo is configured with the configuration file /etc/sudoers which lists each user who can run sudo, along with the programs they can run. Configurable defaults and options for the program also appear in /etc/sudoers.

=Other tools=

sudo does not log commands executed within a shell. For example if a user had permission to access a shell through sudo and executed sudo -s, none of the commands executed within that shell would be logged. In order to log commands within a shell sudo needs to be used with another security tool, i.e. Sudosh, which will offer the user a logged shell. Sudosh can also be used as a login shell.

=See also=

=External links=