Point taken. Next question: do you want a regular user to run tcpdump?
Create user "tcpdumper" in group "tcpdumper".
chgrp tcpdumper `which tcpdump`
chmod 754 `which tcpdump`
Ensure tcpdump works only for root and a member of the 'tcpdumper' group.
Maybe. I see what you are saying, but as a counter-example, I sometimes run tcpdump from within my home directory when troubleshooting problems. tcpdump has to run as superuser, and I have a lot more faith in giving myself and other admins permission to run "sudo tcpdump" than running tcpdump setuid 0. Again, maybe I'm just missing something, but I really don't have a huge problem with tcpdump (or other admin tools) writing UID 0 data to an admin user's home directory.
You don't have to be root to use tcpdump. On ubuntu, do this:
sudo aptitude install libcap2-bin
sudo setcap cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin=eip `which tcpdump`
If you run: getcap `which tcpdump` and it shows:
But no, I have to open the CLI, type sudo nautilus, and re-navigate to and re-edit the file.
If you have to open nautilus as root, then you're doing it wrong.
aptitude install nautilus-gksu
Installing that (log out, then back in) will add an "open as root" or something similar to the right click of menu of nautilus. Suse has this package installed by default. Ubuntu might think that's "too advanced" of a feature for the user base they are targeting.
the GUI is just awful because it doesn't allow for easy 'run as root'.
aptitude install nautilus-gksu
Want to edit smb.conf, you are SOL unless you go through CLI or create a custom link to your favorite editor. I have no problem going CLI only either, except that in Ubuntu 10 everything has been moved into a slew of *.d directories. As a newbie to 10, where the hell is anything you are looking for?
I use this thing called the Internet when I want to find out about things I don't know about. This company called "Google" came up with this great way of helping you find all sorts of information. Check it out sometime, http://google.com
Often my biggest issue in Ubuntu is not so much that I dont know what I want to do, but rather, I cant find what I want to do. I ahve pretty advanced knowledge of firewalls and routers but WTF do you do when you cannot find the conf file or force it to reload?
See above.
or at the least work on encouraging the community to be more active.
Just what exactly does this mean? There is a gigantic community built around Ubuntu. From the thousands of people that translate Ubuntu into their local language for free, or the ones who run the LoCo teams, or the people who spend their time testing new releases and reporting bugs, or the people who submit patches to bugs that do get reported, or the people who spend their time in the IRC channels helping out people having problems or the people who spend hours adding and refining the vast amount of information contained in the wiki. Really.. if you can't find the community around Ubuntu you aren't looking very hard.
I could care less what they do.
I think someone needs to study up on The Caring Continuum.
It is much harder to find a job than to keep one.