Re: sudo inconsistencies in download pages

On Mon, Nov 2, 2020 at 9:09 AM Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 2, 2020 at 9:53 AM Dave Page <dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 5:40 PM Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 10/30/20 1:03 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> >> > Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> writes:
> >> >> The new download pages that generate "copy/paste scripts" include
> sudo
> >> >> in the instructions for debian and ubuntu, but not for redhat and
> >> >> centos. That seems inconsistent :) We should probably be consistent
> >> >> there, or is there a particular reason not to be?
> >> >
> >> > Can't see a reason not to include it on the Red Hat side.
> >>
> >> +1. Doing a scan of other projects, it seems to be acceptable to include
> >> "sudo" as part of providing installation instructions.
> >
> >
> > Does sudo work out of the box on CentOS/RHEL 6? Otherwise I don't see a
> problem with it.
>
> It doesn't necessarily work out of the box on Debian or Ubuntu either,
> it depends on what your starting point is.
>
> For example, any of the minimal images that are popular these days
> because of containers won't have sudo on debian, ubuntu *or* centos.
> Whereas I think most/all cloud images do.
>
> AFAIK it's in the default "standard" installs on RedHat since 7. For
> Debian since 9. I believe Ubuntu has had it longer.
>

I think it's in the standard install on CentOS/RHEL 6, I just can't
remember if it works out of the box for members of the wheel group or
similar - which now you come to mention it, is the case on Debian 9/10, but
not Ubuntu (and I'm pretty sure, not CentOS/RHEL 7+).

>
> Maybe the fact that container images don't have it would actually be
> an argument to remove it from the debian instructions rather than add
> it to the redhat ones. But our target with these specific instructions
> are probably more the "traditional server installs" anyway?
>

I would definitely say that should be the case - most people won't do their
own container installs anyway, and those tend to be quite different anyway,
as most containers won't be running systemd.

For the "most likely to work following a standard OS install" option, I
think we probably should add sudo for CentOS/RHEL 7+, and remove if from
the Debian 9/10 instructions.

--
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

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