OStatic

sudo is a program for Unix-like computer operating systems that allows users to run programs with the security privileges of another user (normally the superuser). By default, sudo will prompt for a user password but it may be configured to require no password. sudo logs each command run and in some cases has completely supplanted the superuser login for administrative tasks, most notably in Ubuntu Linux and Apple's Mac OS X.sudo was originally written by Bob Coggeshall and Cliff Spencer around 1980 at the Department of Computer Science at SUNY/Buffalo. The current version is maintained by OpenBSD developer Todd C Miller and distributed under a BSD-style license.Before running a command with sudo, users must supply their password. Once authenticated, and if the /etc/sudoers configuration file permits the user access, then the command is run. There exist several graphical frontends for use in a GUI environment, notably kdesu and gksudo; Mac OS X also has the authorization services, a GUI equivalent to sudo.   [edit]