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28 lines
1.0 KiB
Markdown
28 lines
1.0 KiB
Markdown
# Safely Edit The Sudoers File With Vim
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The sudoers file is a way on Unix systems to administer various levels of
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permissions to different users. It is important to make sure you "know what
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you're doing" when editing this file. Especially so because if you mangle the
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syntax of the file, you could lock out yourself and even the root user from
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doing all kinds of things. Even from being able to update and fix this file.
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Fortunately, there is a command—`visudo`—that opens the sudoers file in an
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editor that will perform pre-save checks to ensure the file is valid syntax.
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```bash
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$ visudo
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```
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This command has `vi` in the name because it used to be that it would default
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to `vi` as the editor. On Ubuntu, at the very least, this has changed and the
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default is now `nano`.
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If you'd like to still have `visudo` open to `vi` (or `vim`), you can specify
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that with the `SUDO_EDITOR` env var.
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```bash
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$ SUDO_EDITOR=vim visudo
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```
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[source](https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/impish/en/man8/visudo.8.html#environment)
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