[sudo-users] Problem with sudo version

[Bob Proulx]

nassiba at bluemail.ch wrote:
> When I type "sudo -V", it gives me: 
> Sudo version 1.6.7p5
> 
> But we are using solaris 8 as operating system. And when I check in
> the following web site:
> 
> http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/runson.html

You are concerned with something that you do not need to be concerned
about.

Note that I am not a sudo developer but only another user of sudo.

> I have the following versions:
> 
> Solaris	8	sun4u	gcc2.95.2	1.6.8p1	Todd Miller	 --with-pam
> Solaris	8	sun4u	SC4.2		1.6.8p1	Todd Miller	 --with-pam
> Solaris	8	sun4u	Workshop 6.2	1.6.3p7	Donna Dickerson	 none
> Solaris	8	sun4u	gcc2.95.3	1.6.6	Banu Yobas	 none
> Solaris	9	sun4u	gcc3.3.2	1.6.8p1	Todd Miller	 --with-pam
> 
> and version 1.6.7p5 is only for Linux. How can it work on Solaris 2.8?

Did you read the top part of that web page?  It says:

    Systems that Sudo has been reported to run on.

    Just because a specific version of your OS is not listed with the
    current version of Sudo does not mean it won't work.  If an older
    version of Sudo ran on your OS, chances are that the latest version
    does as well.

Sudo is distributed in source code format.  As source code it may be
compiled on a number of different platforms.  The list was a list
where people had reported compiling and running sudo.  It was not a
list saying sudo only ran on those platforms.  The sudo source code is
very portable and will likely compile and run on most unix-like
operating systems.  If any version of sudo runs on your operating
system then it is a good vote of confidence that newer versions will
run there too.

> We are going to upgrade our OS to Solaris 9 rev 12/03. Will the version that
> we have on Solaris 8 work? if not which version do we need to install? is
> 1.6.8p1 the only version that works with Solaris 9?

Generally, yes.  In general newer operating systems will run older
versions of programs.  This is backward compatibility.

For questions such as these it is best to take a test machine and
upgrade it to the newer system.  Then test your applications.  That
way you know 100% that things are either going to work or you are
going to have a problem.  By doing this on the side and not to your
critical production servers you avoid any possibility of downtime.

If you can't test on a separate machine, such as because you don't
have one, then in this case I would proceed anyway and do the upgrade.
I don't have any Solaris machines myself and so can't say with any
authority that sudo works there.  But Solaris is a very popular system
and I am sure people would have reported problems there if they
existed and after being reported any such problems usually get fixed
very quickly.

Bob