Annoying Linux: Make Sudo Show You the Stars

I’ve recently switched back to Linux as my primary OS at work, after running windows for ~2 years. While setting up my system, I’ve noticed quite a few “default settings” that really annoy me.

This will probably be the first blog post in a series of my annoyances. Today’s topic:

The sudo password prompt #

If you run Linux, you’ll have to type in your password quite a lot. That’s another thing that annoys me, but that’s for a later day. This post is about how the default settings of the sudo password prompt gives you zero feedback.

And straight away I can hear someone shouting - “It’s more secure!”

If it’s that important, then why the hell does all the display managers show your password as a string of asterisks when you log on to your machine?

I’ve been using *nix flavoured OSes for almost 20 years now, and I can’t believe it took me this long to google how to fix this. It turns out that it is very easy.

How do we fix it? #

Just add this to /etc/sudoers:

Defaults    pwfeedback

Next time you enter your password you’ll be greeted by lovely stars:

[sudo] password for you: ******

See you in the next one!