oh smokey is here now?

either that, or you're hallucinating

how come Smokey has rep?

its profile does say "I may start answering/asking questions for a while. Don't worry, there's a human behind it."

i am not 100% sure there is a human behind it

hahaha

i think smokey is literally skynet

that's disturbing

@SmokeDetector hey, you are here

@jokerdino you are also here :)

5 messages deleted

I mean like Smokey is pingable.

we can bother it easily then

thank you for cleaning

are the comments here adding anything useful? They seem pretty horrible. I voted to close the question as too broad (was I wrong?) but I upvoted Q&A. I want to flag all those comments but maybe I biased because of previous comments by one user

I don't know whether this is off-topic, but if it is maybe it could be migrated somewhere?

reviewed CVs - 10 Leave Open, 10 Close :/ (5 Skipped)

@Zanna Starting an off-topic conversation in comments about how the OP is supposedly not cut out for their chosen career, then responding to disagreement by saying comments aren't for discussion? No, that's not useful at all, and if making people's posts about their personal worth rather than the technical topic is a pattern, moderators should be informed. Not all comments there are mean, but are there any, from anyone, that should actually be kept? I agree that the question is too broad.

maybe the suggested dupe one (which is wrong imho) and the comment from OP saying why it is not a dupe?

for reviewers I mean

I've flagged all but three comments: the possible duplicate comment, Rinzwind's comment (which looks quite fine to me), and the OP's comment responding to the possible duplicate comment. A moderator might remove some of those too, and I don't think it's unreasonable to flag them, but I've held off since maybe they provide a bit of value.

ok :)

Do we have a better question than that one about whether or not the root account exists in Ubuntu? Something I can point people to when I write comments like this one?

I can't even understand the confusion! The system has 1000s of files owned by root...

I don't know if there is a better question... there are quite a few questions like this but all have unhelpful titles for your purpose I think

@SmokeDetector I haven't got even one yet hahaha

Is there a better wording for "And no Ubuntu technically does not have an active root user" in this answer?

it seems just... incorrect...

Given the content of the quoted source, I think it's reasonable to consider it a miswording... even though originally it was just a wrong answer.

well, what about root in Ubuntu is not active? If we can clarify that, it would make the wording better?

This answer (which I had mentioned above) was deleted, which I hadn't expected -- or not so quickly. It seems the author has some reservations about having removed it, though.

Is there any sensible advice I can give about how to improve it? The part about the root user not existing can be fixed, but the part about how the point of sudo is to prevent you from using a root shell.... can't really be fixed, so much as expanded into something more nuanced.

@Zanna Nothing. It would still be a wrong answer if not for the clarifying quotation. (I mean the answer I'm talking about maybe editing, not the recently deleted answer.)

that's what I'm stuck on

@EliahKagan I mean, I don't want to encourage them to undelete it if it's still going to be wrong. As they say, their answer was easier to understand and more likely to be read... so, given that it was a wrong answer, that's actually bad. But I'm concerned they may be deleting based on downvotes more than based on their own judgment, and that I should thus perhaps offer advice about how it could be brought back in a better state.

@Zanna We often talk about the root account not being "enabled." I don't see that as any less wrong than saying it's not "active." Are there sources that use the "active" terminology to mean that it has a password? Could I just linkify "active" to that and otherwise keep it the same?

@EliahKagan I didn't see anything valuable in that answer, apart from the general idea that running as root is risky. If they read your answer and others & understand them, they will understand what was wrong with their answer I guess. Maybe a bit of time to think about it will help

@Zanna Yeah, if you come up with any ideas about how it might be (or become) valuable, please let me know -- or just comment for the author. I think the timeout is a benefit of sudo. Having to type sudo is definitely a benefit but it is still a benefit of sudo when one runs sudo -s or sudo -i because one is already logged in as a non-root user and because it's even more convenient to run individual commands as root with sudo so people can readily do that if that's all they need.

The thing is, "sudo makes good choices more convenient" is not what the answer is saying. I'd love it if it were... but that's because it's the sort of thing I am constantly telling people, not necessarily because it's what they actually want to say.

yeah :/

I think the sudo tag wiki could use expansion. At least it should include a link to help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo. (And does it actually stand for "superuser do" anymore?)

I mean, pretty much any statement of what it stands for is okay, short of claiming that "su" means "subshell". :)

But I think the relevant Ubuntu wiki pages, and major AU questions, should be linked from that tag wiki.

I don't know if anybody ever reads tag wikis, but I can hope/fear they do.

hahaha I have left a lot of comments on questions saying "read the permissions tag wiki"

@EliahKagan good idea

I am the last editor of that tag wiki, so it's my fault if it sucks :)

(talking about the sudo one, but same goes for the permissions one)

@Zanna Do you want to edit it further, then?

I can have a go at implementing your suggestions here (later tonight though) but if you want to edit it yourself, I'm sure it will be much better!

Well there's some other stuff I want to do first. I would not likely get around to it before you did.

well if I get around to it first, there will be less for you to fix when you get to it, hopefully!

Can Why does setuid permission mode S still work for non-owners? be titled better? I'm not sure it's clearly distinguished from their other question Is executable permission mode S used for anything?

hmmm... what would help others find the useful stuff in the answer

Well I could paste the whole post into the title.

Just kidding.

I distorted the title horribly

The important concepts are (1) $ still triggers expansions in " " in Bourne-style shells and (2) the setuid bit doesn't affect Linux text executables.

yeah I can't think how to get that first part... without, as you say, pasting most of the question into the title

@Zanna I don't agree with that change, because it would make it a duplicate of another question (or one we should have) whose that couldn't be answered by the answer here, and whose answers would not answer the question here.

hmmmmm

I think "Why does setuid mode S seem to work for non-owners on a script?" is probably at least as good as the original.

yeah

@EliahKagan I've edited it, but it might be worse than before

Strange output. Am I missing something?

o.O

@Zanna Worse how? It seems better to me. I'm not sure the benefits list in the article is the most important part to quote for a tag wiki, but maybe if any tag wiki is to quote from the introductory section, it should instead be the one for root. Though I think the text there is reasonably good and I wouldn't want to replace it with a quote from the RootSudo page.

Also, did you write all our tag wikis? :)

haha no! I only wrote/edited a few. I should do some more though - I learned a lot researching tag wikis

I hoped people would come and fix them though

Should this question be given a better title before it's closed (so it won't be placed in the reopen queue from being retitled afterwards)?

> I've tried re-installing Terminal to see if that fixes the problem but still get the same messages.

!

@EliahKagan well cast the last CV before I saw this so sorry :(

@AndroidDev Not a big issue. The title's not useless or anything, and editing all titles into whatever we think of as best may make duplicates less capable of being found and taking users to their originals.

@EliahKagan haha not entirely illogical

→ 4 messages moved to Island of castaway thoughts‌​

Am I right to think this question can be considered a duplicate of the general one about finding out what package provides a file?

Unclear.

I think this question can be considered a duplicate.

Unclear until more information is given, I think.

@EliahKagan voted

@EliahKagan voted

@EliahKagan voted

:)

I think this question is a duplicate (see my comment). Having voted to close it as unclear, then retracted my vote after the OP added information, I can't cast the first duplicate close vote myself.