sudo can be used to give certain users access to commands that require root. This is handy when you’ve got lots of users that need to administer the system or software that resides within it. This also means you don’t have to distribute the . An example would be to allow a user to edit certain configuration files in a directory that’s owned by root, and which changing the permissions could be troublesome or yield unknown consequences.

If you’re an admin and you’re doing things in this way, be careful who you give `sudo vi` permissions to. Allowing someone to access vi through sudo means they can execute anything as root. Vi (or Vim) has the ability to run commands on the OS by just issuing `:! somecommand` within the editor. Therefore, doing a sudo vi means you can `rm -rf`, chgrp or chmod (and everything else), and not have any issues whatsoever.