in elementary OS

Warning Screen Appears When Pasting Sudo Commands in elementary OS Freya Terminal

Another tiny new feature landed in elementary OS Freya. Now when pasting a new “sudo” command in Pantheon Terminal it will display a warning message saying that running commands as administrator can be dangerous. Whatever sudo command is used the warning message will be shown (even when you only paste sudo apt-get update). Of course when you type the command manually then you won’t get a warning, it only displays when pasting.

Pantheon Terminal displays a warning dialog when pasting "sudo" commands
Pantheon Terminal displays a warning dialog when pasting “sudo” commands

What do you think about this new feature? Do you think it’s a good idea to have because new users will be aware of the risks, or does it rather frustrates you?

You don’t like this new feature? Don’t worry, it can be easily turned off through gsettings or dconf at org.pantheon.terminal.settings.unsafe-paste-alert.

My personal opinion is that the idea is good, but it could have been implemented differently, without having to have an extra click. For example when the user pastes a sudo command, it would show a red coloured warning message before the user types his/her password. This message could also inform the user to press CTRL+C if he/she is unsure.

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  • i hope they make the setting avaliable in gui mode, i mean in system settings

    • Andrew M. Sheppard

      Doubtful. They didn’t even test if just hitting [enter] works instead of having to drag that mouse to the ‘big red button.’

      • The point of the warning is that it isn’t something that can be easily dismissed, you have to make a decision to use this command you potentially don’t understand or not. It is supposed to be scary Why would you want people to just be able to hit enter for that?

        • Andrew M. Sheppard

          Interrupting my workflow because people /still/ don’t understand the significance of passwords, never mind sudo, /is no excuse/.

          Windows UAC eventually gets turned off because its such a nuisance. The eOS team didn’t even /make this an option/.

    • Andrew M. Sheppard