Say - entirely hypothetically - we know a shell script that is executed with root privileges via sudo and we found a way for normal users to convince it to call their own code. For demonstration purposes it then would be nice to have code that invokes a local root shell, ready …
Some time ago, I was contacted to fix a computer running Ubuntu . Basically, after many flawless LTS distribution upgrade the last one failed and made the graphical boot hang hard. Thus, the fix was to backup the home directory, re-install a fresh Ubuntu and restore the home. Color me surprised …