I think humor plays a big role in life, especially the life of a SysAdmin. This weekend I was cleaning up some sudoers files and came across a reference to the “insult” option in the documentation. Here is what the manual says:
“insults If set, sudo will insult users when they enter an incorrect password. This flag is off by default.”
This of course peaked my curiosity, and the description in the online documentation got me wondering what kind of insults sudo would spit out. To test this feature out I compiled sudo with the complete set of insults:
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-insults --with-all-insults
$ gmake
$ gmake install
To enable insults I added “Defaults insults” to my sudoers file. This resulted in me laughing myself silly:
$ sudo /bin/false
Password:
Take a stress pill and think things over.
Password:
This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Password:
I feel much better now.
sudo: 3 incorrect password attempts
$ sudo /bin/false
Password:
Have you considered trying to match wits with a rutabaga?
Password:
You speak an infinite deal of nothing
Password:
You speak an infinite deal of nothing
sudo: 3 incorrect password attempts
Life without laughter is pretty much a useless life. You can quote me on that one! ;)