.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 1994-1996, 1998-2005, 2007-2014
.\"	Todd C. Miller <Todd.Miller@courtesan.com>
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.Dd February 15, 2014
.Dt SUDOERS 5
.Os Sudo 1.8.10p3
.Sh NAME
.Nm sudoers
.Nd default sudo security policy plugin
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Em sudoers
policy plugin determines a user's
.Nm sudo
privileges.
It is the default
.Nm sudo
policy plugin.
The policy is driven by
the
.Pa /etc/sudoers
file or, optionally in LDAP.
The policy format is described in detail in the
.Sx SUDOERS FILE FORMAT
section.
For information on storing
.Em sudoers
policy information
in LDAP, please see
.Xr sudoers.ldap 5 .
.Ss Configuring sudo.conf for sudoers
.Nm sudo
consults the
.Xr sudo.conf 5
file to determine which policy and and I/O logging plugins to load.
If no
.Xr sudo.conf 5
file is present, or if it contains no
.Li Plugin
lines,
.Nm sudoers
will be used for policy decisions and I/O logging.
To explicitly configure
.Xr sudo.conf 5
to use the
.Nm sudoers
plugin, the following configuration can be used.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
Plugin sudoers_policy sudoers.so
Plugin sudoers_io sudoers.so
.Ed
.Pp
Starting with
.Nm sudo
1.8.5, it is possible to specify optional arguments to the
.Nm sudoers
plugin in the
.Xr sudo.conf 5
file.
These arguments, if present, should be listed after the path to the plugin
(i.e.\& after
.Pa sudoers.so ) .
Multiple arguments may be specified, separated by white space.
For example:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
Plugin sudoers_policy sudoers.so sudoers_mode=0400
.Ed
.Pp
The following plugin arguments are supported:
.Bl -tag -width 8n
.It ldap_conf=pathname
The
.Em ldap_conf
argument can be used to override the default path to the
.Pa ldap.conf
file.
.It ldap_secret=pathname
The
.Em ldap_secret
argument can be used to override the default path to the
.Pa ldap.secret
file.
.It sudoers_file=pathname
The
.Em sudoers_file
argument can be used to override the default path to the
.Em sudoers
file.
.It sudoers_uid=uid
The
.Em sudoers_uid
argument can be used to override the default owner of the sudoers file.
It should be specified as a numeric user ID.
.It sudoers_gid=gid
The
.Em sudoers_gid
argument can be used to override the default group of the sudoers file.
It must be specified as a numeric group ID (not a group name).
.It sudoers_mode=mode
The
.Em sudoers_mode
argument can be used to override the default file mode for the sudoers file.
It should be specified as an octal value.
.El
.Pp
For more information on configuring
.Xr sudo.conf 5 ,
please refer to its manual.
.Ss Authentication and logging
The
.Em sudoers
security policy requires that most users authenticate
themselves before they can use
.Nm sudo .
A password is not required
if the invoking user is root, if the target user is the same as the
invoking user, or if the policy has disabled authentication for the
user or command.
Unlike
.Xr su 1 ,
when
.Em sudoers
requires
authentication, it validates the invoking user's credentials, not
the target user's (or root's) credentials.
This can be changed via
the
.Em rootpw ,
.Em targetpw
and
.Em runaspw
flags, described later.
.Pp
If a user who is not listed in the policy tries to run a command
via
.Nm sudo ,
mail is sent to the proper authorities.
The address
used for such mail is configurable via the
.Em mailto
Defaults entry
(described later) and defaults to
.Li root .
.Pp
Note that mail will not be sent if an unauthorized user tries to
run
.Nm sudo
with the
.Fl l
or
.Fl v
option.
This allows users to
determine for themselves whether or not they are allowed to use
.Nm sudo .
.Pp
If
.Nm sudo
is run by root and the
.Ev SUDO_USER
environment variable
is set, the
.Em sudoers
policy will use this value to determine who
the actual user is.
This can be used by a user to log commands
through sudo even when a root shell has been invoked.
It also
allows the
.Fl e
option to remain useful even when invoked via a
sudo-run script or program.
Note, however, that the
.Em sudoers
lookup is still done for root, not the user specified by
.Ev SUDO_USER .
.Pp
.Em sudoers
uses per-user time stamp files for credential caching.
Once a user has been authenticated, a record is written
containing the uid that was used to authenticate, the
terminal session ID, and a time stamp
(using a monotonic clock if one is available).
The user may then use
.Nm sudo
without a password for a short period of time
.Po
.Li 15
minutes unless overridden by the
.Em timeout
option
.Pc .
By default,
.Em sudoers
uses a separate record for each tty, which means that
a user's login sessions are authenticated separately.
The
.Em tty_tickets
option can be disabled to force the use of a
single time stamp for all of a user's sessions.
.Pp
.Em sudoers
can log both successful and unsuccessful attempts (as well
as errors) to
.Xr syslog 3 ,
a log file, or both.
By default,
.Em sudoers
will log via
.Xr syslog 3
but this is changeable via the
.Em syslog
and
.Em logfile
Defaults settings.
.Pp
.Em sudoers
also supports logging a command's input and output
streams.
I/O logging is not on by default but can be enabled using
the
.Em log_input
and
.Em log_output
Defaults flags as well as the
.Li LOG_INPUT
and
.Li LOG_OUTPUT
command tags.
.Ss Command environment
Since environment variables can influence program behavior,
.Em sudoers
provides a means to restrict which variables from the user's
environment are inherited by the command to be run.
There are two
distinct ways
.Em sudoers
can deal with environment variables.
.Pp
By default, the
.Em env_reset
option is enabled.
This causes commands
to be executed with a new, minimal environment.
On AIX (and Linux
systems without PAM), the environment is initialized with the
contents of the
.Pa /etc/environment
file.
The new environment contains the
.Ev TERM ,
.Ev PATH ,
.Ev HOME ,
.Ev MAIL ,
.Ev SHELL ,
.Ev LOGNAME ,
.Ev USER ,
.Ev USERNAME
and
.Ev SUDO_*
variables
in addition to variables from the invoking process permitted by the
.Em env_check
and
.Em env_keep
options.
This is effectively a whitelist
for environment variables.
.Pp
If, however, the
.Em env_reset
option is disabled, any variables not
explicitly denied by the
.Em env_check
and
.Em env_delete
options are
inherited from the invoking process.
In this case,
.Em env_check
and
.Em env_delete
behave like a blacklist.
Since it is not possible
to blacklist all potentially dangerous environment variables, use
of the default
.Em env_reset
behavior is encouraged.
.Pp
In all cases, environment variables with a value beginning with
.Li ()
are removed as they could be interpreted as
.Sy bash
functions.
The list of environment variables that
.Nm sudo
allows or denies is
contained in the output of
.Dq Li sudo -V
when run as root.
.Pp
Note that the dynamic linker on most operating systems will remove
variables that can control dynamic linking from the environment of
setuid executables, including
.Nm sudo .
Depending on the operating
system this may include
.Ev _RLD* ,
.Ev DYLD_* ,
.Ev LD_* ,
.Ev LDR_* ,
.Ev LIBPATH ,
.Ev SHLIB_PATH ,
and others.
These type of variables are
removed from the environment before
.Nm sudo
even begins execution
and, as such, it is not possible for
.Nm sudo
to preserve them.
.Pp
As a special case, if
.Nm sudo Ns 's
.Fl i
option (initial login) is
specified,
.Em sudoers
will initialize the environment regardless
of the value of
.Em env_reset .
The
.Ev DISPLAY ,
.Ev PATH
and
.Ev TERM
variables remain unchanged;
.Ev HOME ,
.Ev MAIL ,
.Ev SHELL ,
.Ev USER ,
and
.Ev LOGNAME
are set based on the target user.
On AIX (and Linux
systems without PAM), the contents of
.Pa /etc/environment
are also
included.
All other environment variables are removed.
.Pp
Finally, if the
.Em env_file
option is defined, any variables present
in that file will be set to their specified values as long as they
would not conflict with an existing environment variable.
.Sh SUDOERS FILE FORMAT
The
.Em sudoers
file is composed of two types of entries: aliases
(basically variables) and user specifications (which specify who
may run what).
.Pp
When multiple entries match for a user, they are applied in order.
Where there are multiple matches, the last match is used (which is
not necessarily the most specific match).
.Pp
The
.Em sudoers
grammar will be described below in Extended Backus-Naur
Form (EBNF).
Don't despair if you are unfamiliar with EBNF; it is fairly simple,
and the definitions below are annotated.
.Ss Quick guide to EBNF
EBNF is a concise and exact way of describing the grammar of a language.
Each EBNF definition is made up of
.Em production rules .
E.g.,
.Pp
.Li  symbol ::= definition | alternate1 | alternate2 ...
.Pp
Each
.Em production rule
references others and thus makes up a
grammar for the language.
EBNF also contains the following
operators, which many readers will recognize from regular
expressions.
Do not, however, confuse them with
.Dq wildcard
characters, which have different meanings.
.Bl -tag -width 4n
.It Li \&?
Means that the preceding symbol (or group of symbols) is optional.
That is, it may appear once or not at all.
.It Li *
Means that the preceding symbol (or group of symbols) may appear
zero or more times.
.It Li +
Means that the preceding symbol (or group of symbols) may appear
one or more times.
.El
.Pp
Parentheses may be used to group symbols together.
For clarity,
we will use single quotes
.Pq ''
to designate what is a verbatim character string (as opposed to a symbol name).
.Ss Aliases
There are four kinds of aliases:
.Li User_Alias ,
.Li Runas_Alias ,
.Li Host_Alias
and
.Li Cmnd_Alias .
.Bd -literal
Alias ::= 'User_Alias'  User_Alias (':' User_Alias)* |
          'Runas_Alias' Runas_Alias (':' Runas_Alias)* |
          'Host_Alias'  Host_Alias (':' Host_Alias)* |
          'Cmnd_Alias'  Cmnd_Alias (':' Cmnd_Alias)*

User_Alias ::= NAME '=' User_List

Runas_Alias ::= NAME '=' Runas_List

Host_Alias ::= NAME '=' Host_List

Cmnd_Alias ::= NAME '=' Cmnd_List

NAME ::= [A-Z]([A-Z][0-9]_)*
.Ed
.Pp
Each
.Em alias
definition is of the form
.Bd -literal
Alias_Type NAME = item1, item2, ...
.Ed
.Pp
where
.Em Alias_Type
is one of
.Li User_Alias ,
.Li Runas_Alias ,
.Li Host_Alias ,
or
.Li Cmnd_Alias .
A
.Li NAME
is a string of uppercase letters, numbers,
and underscore characters
.Pq Ql _ .
A
.Li NAME
.Sy must
start with an
uppercase letter.
It is possible to put several alias definitions
of the same type on a single line, joined by a colon
.Pq Ql :\& .
E.g.,
.Bd -literal
Alias_Type NAME = item1, item2, item3 : NAME = item4, item5
.Ed
.Pp
The definitions of what constitutes a valid
.Em alias
member follow.
.Bd -literal
User_List ::= User |
              User ',' User_List

User ::= '!'* user name |
         '!'* #uid |
         '!'* %group |
         '!'* %#gid |
         '!'* +netgroup |
         '!'* %:nonunix_group |
         '!'* %:#nonunix_gid |
         '!'* User_Alias
.Ed
.Pp
A
.Li User_List
is made up of one or more user names, user IDs
(prefixed with
.Ql # ) ,
system group names and IDs (prefixed with
.Ql %
and
.Ql %#
respectively), netgroups (prefixed with
.Ql + ) ,
non-Unix group names and IDs (prefixed with
.Ql %:
and
.Ql %:#
respectively) and
.Li User_Alias Ns es.
Each list item may be prefixed with zero or more
.Ql \&!
operators.
An odd number of
.Ql \&!
operators negate the value of
the item; an even number just cancel each other out.
.Pp
A
.Li user name ,
.Li uid ,
.Li group ,
.Li gid ,
.Li netgroup ,
.Li nonunix_group
or
.Li nonunix_gid
may be enclosed in double quotes to avoid the
need for escaping special characters.
Alternately, special characters
may be specified in escaped hex mode, e.g.\& \ex20 for space.
When
using double quotes, any prefix characters must be included inside
the quotes.
.Pp
The actual
.Li nonunix_group
and
.Li nonunix_gid
syntax depends on
the underlying group provider plugin.
For instance, the QAS AD plugin supports the following formats:
.Bl -bullet -width 4n
.It
Group in the same domain: "%:Group Name"
.It
Group in any domain: "%:Group Name@FULLY.QUALIFIED.DOMAIN"
.It
Group SID: "%:S-1-2-34-5678901234-5678901234-5678901234-567"
.El
.Pp
See
.Sx "GROUP PROVIDER PLUGINS"
for more information.
.Pp
Note that quotes around group names are optional.
Unquoted strings must use a backslash
.Pq Ql \e
to escape spaces and special characters.
See
.Sx Other special characters and reserved words
for a list of
characters that need to be escaped.
.Bd -literal
Runas_List ::= Runas_Member |
               Runas_Member ',' Runas_List

Runas_Member ::= '!'* user name |
                 '!'* #uid |
                 '!'* %group |
                 '!'* %#gid |
                 '!'* %:nonunix_group |
                 '!'* %:#nonunix_gid |
                 '!'* +netgroup |
                 '!'* Runas_Alias
.Ed
.Pp
A
.Li Runas_List
is similar to a
.Li User_List
except that instead
of
.Li User_Alias Ns es
it can contain
.Li Runas_Alias Ns es .
Note that
user names and groups are matched as strings.
In other words, two
users (groups) with the same uid (gid) are considered to be distinct.
If you wish to match all user names with the same uid (e.g.\&
root and toor), you can use a uid instead (#0 in the example given).
.Bd -literal
Host_List ::= Host |
              Host ',' Host_List

Host ::= '!'* host name |
         '!'* ip_addr |
         '!'* network(/netmask)? |
         '!'* +netgroup |
         '!'* Host_Alias
.Ed
.Pp
A
.Li Host_List
is made up of one or more host names, IP addresses,
network numbers, netgroups (prefixed with
.Ql + )
and other aliases.
Again, the value of an item may be negated with the
.Ql \&!
operator.
If you do not specify a netmask along with the network number,
.Nm sudo
will query each of the local host's network interfaces and,
if the network number corresponds to one of the hosts's network
interfaces, the corresponding netmask will be used.
The netmask
may be specified either in standard IP address notation
(e.g.\& 255.255.255.0 or ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::),
or CIDR notation (number of bits, e.g.\& 24 or 64).
A host name may include shell-style wildcards (see the
.Sx Wildcards
section below),
but unless the
.Li host name
command on your machine returns the fully
qualified host name, you'll need to use the
.Em fqdn
option for wildcards to be useful.
Note that
.Nm sudo
only inspects actual network interfaces; this means that IP address
127.0.0.1 (localhost) will never match.
Also, the host name
.Dq localhost
will only match if that is the actual host name, which is usually
only the case for non-networked systems.
.Bd -literal
digest ::= [A-Fa-f0-9]+ |
	   [[A-Za-z0-9\+/=]+

Digest_Spec ::= "sha224" ':' digest |
		"sha256" ':' digest |
		"sha384" ':' digest |
		"sha512" ':' digest

Cmnd_List ::= Cmnd |
              Cmnd ',' Cmnd_List

command name ::= file name |
                 file name args |
                 file name '""'

Cmnd ::= Digest_Spec? '!'* command name |
         '!'* directory |
         '!'* "sudoedit" |
         '!'* Cmnd_Alias
.Ed
.Pp
A
.Li Cmnd_List
is a list of one or more command names, directories, and other aliases.
A command name is a fully qualified file name which may include
shell-style wildcards (see the
.Sx Wildcards
section below).
A simple file name allows the user to run the command with any
arguments he/she wishes.
However, you may also specify command line arguments (including
wildcards).
Alternately, you can specify
.Li \&""
to indicate that the command
may only be run
.Sy without
command line arguments.
A directory is a
fully qualified path name ending in a
.Ql / .
When you specify a directory in a
.Li Cmnd_List ,
the user will be able to run any file within that directory
(but not in any sub-directories therein).
.Pp
If a
.Li Cmnd
has associated command line arguments, then the arguments
in the
.Li Cmnd
must match exactly those given by the user on the command line
(or match the wildcards if there are any).
Note that the following characters must be escaped with a
.Ql \e
if they are used in command arguments:
.Ql ,\& ,
.Ql :\& ,
.Ql =\& ,
.Ql \e .
The built-in command
.Dq Li sudoedit
is used to permit a user to run
.Nm sudo
with the
.Fl e
option (or as
.Nm sudoedit ) .
It may take command line arguments just as a normal command does.
Note that
.Dq Li sudoedit
is a command built into
.Nm sudo
itself and must be specified in
.Em sudoers
without a leading path.
.Pp
If a
.Li command name
is prefixed with a
.Li Digest_Spec ,
the command will only match successfully if it can be verified
using the specified SHA-2 digest.
This may be useful in situations where the user invoking
.Nm sudo
has write access to the command or its parent directory.
The following digest formats are supported: sha224, sha256, sha384 and sha512.
The string may be specified in either hex or base64 format
(base64 is more compact).
There are several utilities capable of generating SHA-2 digests in hex
format such as openssl, shasum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum, sha512sum.
.Pp
For example, using openssl:
.Bd -literal
$ openssl dgst -sha224 /bin/ls
SHA224(/bin/ls)= 118187da8364d490b4a7debbf483004e8f3e053ec954309de2c41a25
.Ed
.Pp
It is also possible to use openssl to generate base64 output:
.Bd -literal
$ openssl dgst -binary -sha224 /bin/ls | openssl base64
EYGH2oNk1JC0p9679IMATo8+BT7JVDCd4sQaJQ==
.Ed
.Pp
Command digests are only supported by version 1.8.7 or higher.
.Ss Defaults
Certain configuration options may be changed from their default
values at run-time via one or more
.Li Default_Entry
lines.
These may affect all users on any host, all users on a specific host, a
specific user, a specific command, or commands being run as a specific user.
Note that per-command entries may not include command line arguments.
If you need to specify arguments, define a
.Li Cmnd_Alias
and reference
that instead.
.Bd -literal
Default_Type ::= 'Defaults' |
                 'Defaults' '@' Host_List |
                 'Defaults' ':' User_List |
                 'Defaults' '!' Cmnd_List |
                 'Defaults' '>' Runas_List

Default_Entry ::= Default_Type Parameter_List

Parameter_List ::= Parameter |
                   Parameter ',' Parameter_List

Parameter ::= Parameter '=' Value |
              Parameter '+=' Value |
              Parameter '-=' Value |
              '!'* Parameter
.Ed
.Pp
Parameters may be
.Sy flags ,
.Sy integer
values,
.Sy strings ,
or
.Sy lists .
Flags are implicitly boolean and can be turned off via the
.Ql \&!
operator.
Some integer, string and list parameters may also be
used in a boolean context to disable them.
Values may be enclosed
in double quotes
.Pq \&""
when they contain multiple words.
Special characters may be escaped with a backslash
.Pq Ql \e .
.Pp
Lists have two additional assignment operators,
.Li +=
and
.Li -= .
These operators are used to add to and delete from a list respectively.
It is not an error to use the
.Li -=
operator to remove an element
that does not exist in a list.
.Pp
Defaults entries are parsed in the following order: generic, host
and user Defaults first, then runas Defaults and finally command
defaults.
.Pp
See
.Sx SUDOERS OPTIONS
for a list of supported Defaults parameters.
.Ss User specification
.Bd -literal
User_Spec ::= User_List Host_List '=' Cmnd_Spec_List \e
              (':' Host_List '=' Cmnd_Spec_List)*

Cmnd_Spec_List ::= Cmnd_Spec |
                   Cmnd_Spec ',' Cmnd_Spec_List

Cmnd_Spec ::= Runas_Spec? SELinux_Spec? Tag_Spec* Cmnd

Runas_Spec ::= '(' Runas_List? (':' Runas_List)? ')'

SELinux_Spec ::= ('ROLE=role' | 'TYPE=type')

Tag_Spec ::= ('NOPASSWD:' | 'PASSWD:' | 'NOEXEC:' | 'EXEC:' |
              'SETENV:' | 'NOSETENV:' | 'FOLLOW:' | 'NOFOLLOW' |
              'LOG_INPUT:' | 'NOLOG_INPUT:' | 'LOG_OUTPUT:' | 'NOLOG_OUTPUT:')
.Ed
.Pp
A
.Sy user specification
determines which commands a user may run
(and as what user) on specified hosts.
By default, commands are
run as
.Sy root ,
but this can be changed on a per-command basis.
.Pp
The basic structure of a user specification is
.Dq who where = (as_whom) what .
Let's break that down into its constituent parts:
.Ss Runas_Spec
A
.Li Runas_Spec
determines the user and/or the group that a command
may be run as.
A fully-specified
.Li Runas_Spec
consists of two
.Li Runas_List Ns s
(as defined above) separated by a colon
.Pq Ql :\&
and enclosed in a set of parentheses.
The first
.Li Runas_List
indicates
which users the command may be run as via
.Nm sudo Ns 's
.Fl u
option.
The second defines a list of groups that can be specified via
.Nm sudo Ns 's
.Fl g
option.
If both
.Li Runas_List Ns s
are specified, the command may be run with any combination of users
and groups listed in their respective
.Li Runas_List Ns s.
If only the first is specified, the command may be run as any user
in the list but no
.Fl g
option
may be specified.
If the first
.Li Runas_List
is empty but the
second is specified, the command may be run as the invoking user
with the group set to any listed in the
.Li Runas_List .
If both
.Li Runas_List Ns s
are empty, the command may only be run as the invoking user.
If no
.Li Runas_Spec
is specified the command may be run as
.Sy root
and
no group may be specified.
.Pp
A
.Li Runas_Spec
sets the default for the commands that follow it.
What this means is that for the entry:
.Bd -literal
dgb	boulder = (operator) /bin/ls, /bin/kill, /usr/bin/lprm
.Ed
.Pp
The user
.Sy dgb
may run
.Pa /bin/ls ,
.Pa /bin/kill ,
and
.Pa /usr/bin/lprm Ns \(em Ns but
only as
.Sy operator .
E.g.,
.Bd -literal
$ sudo -u operator /bin/ls
.Ed
.Pp
It is also possible to override a
.Li Runas_Spec
later on in an entry.
If we modify the entry like so:
.Bd -literal
dgb	boulder = (operator) /bin/ls, (root) /bin/kill, /usr/bin/lprm
.Ed
.Pp
Then user
.Sy dgb
is now allowed to run
.Pa /bin/ls
as
.Sy operator ,
but
.Pa /bin/kill
and
.Pa /usr/bin/lprm
as
.Sy root .
.Pp
We can extend this to allow
.Sy dgb
to run
.Li /bin/ls
with either
the user or group set to
.Sy operator :
.Bd -literal
dgb	boulder = (operator : operator) /bin/ls, (root) /bin/kill,\e
	/usr/bin/lprm
.Ed
.Pp
Note that while the group portion of the
.Li Runas_Spec
permits the
user to run as command with that group, it does not force the user
to do so.
If no group is specified on the command line, the command
will run with the group listed in the target user's password database
entry.
The following would all be permitted by the sudoers entry above:
.Bd -literal
$ sudo -u operator /bin/ls
$ sudo -u operator -g operator /bin/ls
$ sudo -g operator /bin/ls
.Ed
.Pp
In the following example, user
.Sy tcm
may run commands that access
a modem device file with the dialer group.
.Bd -literal
tcm	boulder = (:dialer) /usr/bin/tip, /usr/bin/cu,\e
	/usr/local/bin/minicom
.Ed
.Pp
Note that in this example only the group will be set, the command
still runs as user
.Sy tcm .
E.g.\&
.Bd -literal
$ sudo -g dialer /usr/bin/cu
.Ed
.Pp
Multiple users and groups may be present in a
.Li Runas_Spec ,
in which case the user may select any combination of users and groups via the
.Fl u
and
.Fl g
options.
In this example:
.Bd -literal
alan	ALL = (root, bin : operator, system) ALL
.Ed
.Pp
user
.Sy alan
may run any command as either user root or bin,
optionally setting the group to operator or system.
.Ss SELinux_Spec
On systems with SELinux support,
.Em sudoers
entries may optionally have an SELinux role and/or type associated
with a command.
If a role or
type is specified with the command it will override any default values
specified in
.Em sudoers .
A role or type specified on the command line,
however, will supersede the values in
.Em sudoers .
.Ss Tag_Spec
A command may have zero or more tags associated with it.
There are
ten possible tag values:
.Li NOPASSWD ,
.Li PASSWD ,
.Li NOEXEC ,
.Li EXEC ,
.Li SETENV ,
.Li NOSETENV ,
.Li FOLLOW ,
.Li NOFOLLOW ,
.Li LOG_INPUT ,
.Li NOLOG_INPUT ,
.Li LOG_OUTPUT
and
.Li NOLOG_OUTPUT .
Once a tag is set on a
.Li Cmnd ,
subsequent
.Li Cmnd Ns s
in the
.Li Cmnd_Spec_List ,
inherit the tag unless it is overridden by the opposite tag (in other words,
.Li PASSWD
overrides
.Li NOPASSWD
and
.Li NOEXEC
overrides
.Li EXEC ) .
.Bl -hang -width 0n
.It Em NOPASSWD No and Em PASSWD
.sp
By default,
.Nm sudo
requires that a user authenticate him or herself
before running a command.
This behavior can be modified via the
.Li NOPASSWD
tag.
Like a
.Li Runas_Spec ,
the
.Li NOPASSWD
tag sets
a default for the commands that follow it in the
.Li Cmnd_Spec_List .
Conversely, the
.Li PASSWD
tag can be used to reverse things.
For example:
.Bd -literal
ray	rushmore = NOPASSWD: /bin/kill, /bin/ls, /usr/bin/lprm
.Ed
.Pp
would allow the user
.Sy ray
to run
.Pa /bin/kill ,
.Pa /bin/ls ,
and
.Pa /usr/bin/lprm
as
.Sy root
on the machine rushmore without authenticating himself.
If we only want
.Sy ray
to be able to
run
.Pa /bin/kill
without a password the entry would be:
.Bd -literal
ray	rushmore = NOPASSWD: /bin/kill, PASSWD: /bin/ls, /usr/bin/lprm
.Ed
.Pp
Note, however, that the
.Li PASSWD
tag has no effect on users who are in the group specified by the
.Em exempt_group
option.
.Pp
By default, if the
.Li NOPASSWD
tag is applied to any of the entries for a user on the current host,
he or she will be able to run
.Dq Li sudo -l
without a password.
Additionally, a user may only run
.Dq Li sudo -v
without a password if the
.Li NOPASSWD
tag is present for all a user's entries that pertain to the current host.
This behavior may be overridden via the
.Em verifypw
and
.Em listpw
options.
.It Em NOEXEC No and Em EXEC
.sp
If
.Nm sudo
has been compiled with
.Em noexec
support and the underlying operating system supports it, the
.Li NOEXEC
tag can be used to prevent a dynamically-linked executable from
running further commands itself.
.Pp
In the following example, user
.Sy aaron
may run
.Pa /usr/bin/more
and
.Pa /usr/bin/vi
but shell escapes will be disabled.
.Bd -literal
aaron	shanty = NOEXEC: /usr/bin/more, /usr/bin/vi
.Ed
.Pp
See the
.Sx Preventing shell escapes
section below for more details on how
.Li NOEXEC
works and whether or not it will work on your system.
.It Em SETENV No and Em NOSETENV
.sp
These tags override the value of the
.Em setenv
option on a per-command basis.
Note that if
.Li SETENV
has been set for a command, the user may disable the
.Em env_reset
option from the command line via the
.Fl E
option.
Additionally, environment variables set on the command
line are not subject to the restrictions imposed by
.Em env_check ,
.Em env_delete ,
or
.Em env_keep .
As such, only trusted users should be allowed to set variables in this manner.
If the command matched is
.Sy ALL ,
the
.Li SETENV
tag is implied for that command; this default may be overridden by use of the
.Li NOSETENV
tag.
.It Em FOLLOW No and Em NOFOLLOW
Starting with version 1.8.10p3\-1+deb8u3,
.Nm sudoedit
will not follow symbolic links when opening files unless the
.Em sudoedit_follow
option is enabled.
The
.Em FOLLOW
and
.Em NOFOLLOW
tags override the value of
.Em sudoedit_follow
and can be used to permit (or deny) the editing of symbolic links
on a per-command basis.
These tags are only effective for the
.Em sudoedit
command and are ignored for all other commands.
.It Em LOG_INPUT No and Em NOLOG_INPUT
.sp
These tags override the value of the
.Em log_input
option on a per-command basis.
For more information, see the description of
.Em log_input
in the
.Sx SUDOERS OPTIONS
section below.
.It Em LOG_OUTPUT No and Em NOLOG_OUTPUT
.sp
These tags override the value of the
.Em log_output
option on a per-command basis.
For more information, see the description of
.Em log_output
in the
.Sx SUDOERS OPTIONS
section below.
.El
.Ss Wildcards
.Nm sudo
allows shell-style
.Em wildcards
(aka meta or glob characters)
to be used in host names, path names and command line arguments in the
.Em sudoers
file.
Wildcard matching is done via the
.Xr glob 3
and
.Xr fnmatch 3
functions as specified by
.St -p1003.1 .
Note that these are
.Em not
regular expressions.
.Bl -tag -width 8n
.It Li *
Matches any set of zero or more characters.
.It Li \&?
Matches any single character.
.It Li [...]
Matches any character in the specified range.
.It Li [!...]
Matches any character
.Sy not
in the specified range.
.It Li \ex
For any character
.Sq x ,
evaluates to
.Sq x .
This is used to escape special characters such as:
.Ql * ,
.Ql \&? ,
.Ql [\& ,
and
.Ql ]\& .
.El
.Pp
Character classes may also be used if your system's
.Xr glob 3
and
.Xr fnmatch 3
functions support them.
However, because the
.Ql :\&
character has special meaning in
.Em sudoers ,
it must be
escaped.
For example:
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
/bin/ls [[:\&alpha:\&]]*
.Ed
.Pp
Would match any file name beginning with a letter.
.Pp
Note that a forward slash
.Pq Ql /
will
.Sy not
be matched by
wildcards used in the path name.
This is to make a path like:
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
/usr/bin/*
.Ed
.Pp
match
.Pa /usr/bin/who
but not
.Pa /usr/bin/X11/xterm .
.Pp
When matching the command line arguments, however, a slash
.Sy does
get matched by wildcards since command line arguments may contain
arbitrary strings and not just path names.
.Pp
Wildcards in command line arguments should be used with care.
Because command line arguments are matched as a single, concatenated
string, a wildcard such as
.Ql \&?
or
.Ql *
can match multiple words.
For example, while a sudoers entry like:
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
%operator ALL = /bin/cat /var/log/messages*
.Ed
.Pp
will allow command like:
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
$ sudo cat /var/log/messages.1
.Ed
.Pp
It will also allow:
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
$ sudo cat /var/log/messages /etc/shadow
.Ed
.Pp
which is probably not what was intended.
.Ss Exceptions to wildcard rules
The following exceptions apply to the above rules:
.Bl -tag -width 8n
.It Li \&""
If the empty string
.Li \&""
is the only command line argument in the
.Em sudoers
entry it means that command is not allowed to be run with
.Sy any
arguments.
.It sudoedit
Command line arguments to the
.Em sudoedit
built-in command should always be path names, so a forward slash
.Pq Ql /
will not be matched by a wildcard.
.El
.Ss Including other files from within sudoers
It is possible to include other
.Em sudoers
files from within the
.Em sudoers
file currently being parsed using the
.Li #include
and
.Li #includedir
directives.
.Pp
This can be used, for example, to keep a site-wide
.Em sudoers
file in addition to a local, per-machine file.
For the sake of this example the site-wide
.Em sudoers
will be
.Pa /etc/sudoers
and the per-machine one will be
.Pa /etc/sudoers.local .
To include
.Pa /etc/sudoers.local
from within
.Pa /etc/sudoers
we would use the
following line in
.Pa /etc/sudoers :
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
#include /etc/sudoers.local
.Ed
.Pp
When
.Nm sudo
reaches this line it will suspend processing of the current file
.Pq Pa /etc/sudoers
and switch to
.Pa /etc/sudoers.local .
Upon reaching the end of
.Pa /etc/sudoers.local ,
the rest of
.Pa /etc/sudoers
will be processed.
Files that are included may themselves include other files.
A hard limit of 128 nested include files is enforced to prevent include
file loops.
.Pp
If the path to the include file is not fully-qualified (does not
begin with a
.Ql / ,
it must be located in the same directory as the sudoers file it was
included from.
For example, if
.Pa /etc/sudoers
contains the line:
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
.Li #include sudoers.local
.Ed
.Pp
the file that will be included is
.Pa /etc/sudoers.local .
.Pp
The file name may also include the
.Li %h
escape, signifying the short form of the host name.
In other words, if the machine's host name is
.Dq xerxes ,
then
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
#include /etc/sudoers.%h
.Ed
.Pp
will cause
.Nm sudo
to include the file
.Pa /etc/sudoers.xerxes .
.Pp
The
.Li #includedir
directive can be used to create a
.Pa sudo.d
directory that the system package manager can drop
.Em sudoers
rules
into as part of package installation.
For example, given:
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
#includedir /etc/sudoers.d
.Ed
.Pp
.Nm sudo
will read each file in
.Pa /etc/sudoers.d ,
skipping file names that end in
.Ql ~
or contain a
.Ql .\&
character to avoid causing problems with package manager or editor
temporary/backup files.
Files are parsed in sorted lexical order.
That is,
.Pa /etc/sudoers.d/01_first
will be parsed before
.Pa /etc/sudoers.d/10_second .
Be aware that because the sorting is lexical, not numeric,
.Pa /etc/sudoers.d/1_whoops
would be loaded
.Sy after
.Pa /etc/sudoers.d/10_second .
Using a consistent number of leading zeroes in the file names can be used
to avoid such problems.
.Pp
Note that unlike files included via
.Li #include ,
.Nm visudo
will not edit the files in a
.Li #includedir
directory unless one of them contains a syntax error.
It is still possible to run
.Nm visudo
with the
.Fl f
flag to edit the files directly.
.Ss Other special characters and reserved words
The pound sign
.Pq Ql #
is used to indicate a comment (unless it is part of a #include
directive or unless it occurs in the context of a user name and is
followed by one or more digits, in which case it is treated as a
uid).
Both the comment character and any text after it, up to the end of
the line, are ignored.
.Pp
The reserved word
.Sy ALL
is a built-in
.Em alias
that always causes a match to succeed.
It can be used wherever one might otherwise use a
.Li Cmnd_Alias ,
.Li User_Alias ,
.Li Runas_Alias ,
or
.Li Host_Alias .
You should not try to define your own
.Em alias
called
.Sy ALL
as the built-in alias will be used in preference to your own.
Please note that using
.Sy ALL
can be dangerous since in a command context, it allows the user to run
.Sy any
command on the system.
.Pp
An exclamation point
.Pq Ql \&!
can be used as a logical
.Em not
operator in a list or
.Em alias
as well as in front of a
.Li Cmnd .
This allows one to exclude certain values.
For the
.Ql \&!
operator to be effective, there must be something for it to exclude.
For example, to match all users except for root one would use:
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
ALL,!root
.Ed
.Pp
If the
.Sy ALL ,
is omitted, as in:
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
!root
.Ed
.Pp
it would explicitly deny root but not match any other users.
This is different from a true
.Dq negation
operator.
.Pp
Note, however, that using a
.Ql \&!
in conjunction with the built-in
.Sy ALL
alias to allow a user to run
.Dq all but a few
commands rarely works as intended (see
.Sx SECURITY NOTES
below).
.Pp
Long lines can be continued with a backslash
.Pq Ql \e
as the last character on the line.
.Pp
White space between elements in a list as well as special syntactic
characters in a
.Em User Specification
.Po
.Ql =\& ,
.Ql :\& ,
.Ql (\& ,
.Ql )\&
.Pc
is optional.
.Pp
The following characters must be escaped with a backslash
.Pq Ql \e
when used as part of a word (e.g.\& a user name or host name):
.Ql \&! ,
.Ql =\& ,
.Ql :\& ,
.Ql ,\& ,
.Ql (\& ,
.Ql )\& ,
.Ql \e .
.Sh SUDOERS OPTIONS
.Nm sudo Ns 's
behavior can be modified by
.Li Default_Entry
lines, as explained earlier.
A list of all supported Defaults parameters, grouped by type, are listed below.
.Pp
.Sy Boolean Flags :
.Bl -tag -width 16n
.It always_set_home
If enabled,
.Nm sudo
will set the
.Ev HOME
environment variable to the home directory of the target user
(which is root unless the
.Fl u
option is used).
This effectively means that the
.Fl H
option is always implied.
Note that
.Ev HOME
is already set when the
.Em env_reset
option is enabled, so
.Em always_set_home
is only effective for configurations where either
.Em env_reset
is disabled or
.Ev HOME
is present in the
.Em env_keep
list.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It authenticate
If set, users must authenticate themselves via a password (or other
means of authentication) before they may run commands.
This default may be overridden via the
.Li PASSWD
and
.Li NOPASSWD
tags.
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It closefrom_override
If set, the user may use
.Nm sudo Ns 's
.Fl C
option which overrides the default starting point at which
.Nm sudo
begins closing open file descriptors.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It compress_io
If set, and
.Nm sudo
is configured to log a command's input or output,
the I/O logs will be compressed using
.Sy zlib .
This flag is
.Em on
by default when
.Nm sudo
is compiled with
.Sy zlib
support.
.It use_netgroups
If set, netgroups (prefixed with
.Ql + ) ,
may be used in place of a user or host.
For LDAP-based sudoers, netgroup support requires an expensive
substring match on the server.
If netgroups are not needed, this option can be disabled to reduce the
load on the LDAP server.
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It exec_background
By default,
.Nm sudo
runs a command as the foreground process as long as
.Nm sudo
itself is running in the foreground.
When the
.Em exec_background
flag is enabled and the command is being run in a pty (due to I/O logging
or the
.Em use_pty
flag), the command will be run as a background process.
Attempts to read from the controlling terminal (or to change terminal
settings) will result in the command being suspended with the
.Dv SIGTTIN
signal (or
.Dv SIGTTOU
in the case of terminal settings).
If this happens when
.Nm sudo
is a foreground process, the command will be granted the controlling terminal
and resumed in the foreground with no user intervention required.
The advantage of initially running the command in the background is that
.Nm sudo
need not read from the terminal unless the command explicitly requests it.
Otherwise, any terminal input must be passed to the command, whether it
has required it or not (the kernel buffers terminals so it is not possible
to tell whether the command really wants the input).
This is different from historic
.Em sudo
behavior or when the command is not being run in a pty.
.Pp
For this to work seamlessly, the operating system must support the
automatic restarting of system calls.
Unfortunately, not all operating systems do this by default,
and even those that do may have bugs.
For example, Mac OS X fails to restart the
.Fn tcgetattr
and
.Fn tcsetattr
system calls (this is a bug in Mac OS X).
Furthermore, because this behavior depends on the command stopping with the
.Dv SIGTTIN
or
.Dv SIGTTOU
signals, programs that catch these signals and suspend themselves
with a different signal (usually
.Dv SIGTOP )
will not be automatically foregrounded.
Some versions of the linux
.Xr su 1
command behave this way.
.Pp
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.7 or higher.
It has no effect unless I/O logging is enabled or the
.Em use_pty
flag is enabled.
.It env_editor
If set,
.Nm visudo
will use the value of the
.Ev EDITOR
or
.Ev VISUAL
environment variables before falling back on the default editor list.
Note that this may create a security hole as it allows the user to
run any arbitrary command as root without logging.
A safer alternative is to place a colon-separated list of editors
in the
.Li editor
variable.
.Nm visudo
will then only use the
.Ev EDITOR
or
.Ev VISUAL
if they match a value specified in
.Li editor .
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It env_reset
If set,
.Nm sudo
will run the command in a minimal environment containing the
.Ev TERM ,
.Ev PATH ,
.Ev HOME ,
.Ev MAIL ,
.Ev SHELL ,
.Ev LOGNAME ,
.Ev USER ,
.Ev USERNAME
and
.Ev SUDO_*
variables.
Any
variables in the caller's environment that match the
.Li env_keep
and
.Li env_check
lists are then added, followed by any variables present in the file
specified by the
.Em env_file
option (if any).
The default contents of the
.Li env_keep
and
.Li env_check
lists are displayed when
.Nm sudo
is run by root with the
.Fl V
option.
If the
.Em secure_path
option is set, its value will be used for the
.Ev PATH
environment variable.
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It fast_glob
Normally,
.Nm sudo
uses the
.Xr glob 3
function to do shell-style globbing when matching path names.
However, since it accesses the file system,
.Xr glob 3
can take a long time to complete for some patterns, especially
when the pattern references a network file system that is mounted
on demand (auto mounted).
The
.Em fast_glob
option causes
.Nm sudo
to use the
.Xr fnmatch 3
function, which does not access the file system to do its matching.
The disadvantage of
.Em fast_glob
is that it is unable to match relative path names such as
.Pa ./ls
or
.Pa ../bin/ls .
This has security implications when path names that include globbing
characters are used with the negation operator,
.Ql !\& ,
as such rules can be trivially bypassed.
As such, this option should not be used when
.Em sudoers
contains rules that contain negated path names which include globbing
characters.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It fqdn
Set this flag if you want to put fully qualified host names in the
.Em sudoers
file when the local host name (as returned by the
.Li hostname
command) does not contain the domain name.
In other words, instead of myhost you would use myhost.mydomain.edu.
You may still use the short form if you wish (and even mix the two).
This option is only effective when the
.Dq canonical
host name, as returned by the
.Fn getaddrinfo
or
.Fn gethostbyname
function, is a fully-qualified domain name.
This is usually the case when the system is configured to use DNS
for host name resolution.
.Pp
If the system is configured to use the
.Pa /etc/hosts
file in preference to DNS, the
.Dq canonical
host name may not be fully-qualified.
The order that sources are queried for host name resolution
is usually specified in the
.Pa /etc/nsswitch.conf ,
.Pa /etc/netsvc.conf ,
.Pa /etc/host.conf ,
or, in some cases,
.Pa /etc/resolv.conf
file.
In the
.Pa /etc/hosts
file, the first host name of the entry is considered to be the
.Dq canonical
name; subsequent names are aliases that are not used by
.Nm sudoers .
For example, the following hosts file line for the machine
.Dq xyzzy
has the fully-qualified domain name as the
.Dq canonical
host name, and the short version as an alias.
.sp
.Dl 192.168.1.1	xyzzy.sudo.ws xyzzy
.sp
If the machine's hosts file entry is not formatted properly, the
.Em fqdn
option will not be effective if it is queried before DNS.
.Pp
Beware that when using DNS for host name resolution, turning on
.Em fqdn
requires
.Nm sudoers
to make DNS lookups which renders
.Nm sudo
unusable if DNS stops working (for example if the machine is disconnected
from the network).
Also note that just like with the hosts file, you must use the
.Dq canonical
name as DNS knows it.
That is, you may not use a host alias
.Po
.Li CNAME
entry
.Pc
due to performance issues and the fact that there is no way to get all
aliases from DNS.
.Pp
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It ignore_dot
If set,
.Nm sudo
will ignore "." or "" (both denoting current directory) in the
.Ev PATH
environment variable; the
.Ev PATH
itself is not modified.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It ignore_local_sudoers
If set via LDAP, parsing of
.Pa /etc/sudoers
will be skipped.
This is intended for Enterprises that wish to prevent the usage of local
sudoers files so that only LDAP is used.
This thwarts the efforts of rogue operators who would attempt to add roles to
.Pa /etc/sudoers .
When this option is present,
.Pa /etc/sudoers
does not even need to exist.
Since this option tells
.Nm sudo
how to behave when no specific LDAP entries have been matched, this
sudoOption is only meaningful for the
.Li cn=defaults
section.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It insults
If set,
.Nm sudo
will insult users when they enter an incorrect password.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It log_host
If set, the host name will be logged in the (non-syslog)
.Nm sudo
log file.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It log_input
If set,
.Nm sudo
will run the command in a
.Em pseudo tty
and log all user input.
If the standard input is not connected to the user's tty, due to
I/O redirection or because the command is part of a pipeline, that
input is also captured and stored in a separate log file.
.Pp
Input is logged to the directory specified by the
.Em iolog_dir
option
.Po
.Pa /var/log/sudo-io
by default
.Pc
using a unique session ID that is included in the normal
.Nm sudo
log line, prefixed with
.Dq Li TSID= .
The
.Em iolog_file
option may be used to control the format of the session ID.
.Pp
Note that user input may contain sensitive information such as
passwords (even if they are not echoed to the screen), which will
be stored in the log file unencrypted.
In most cases, logging the command output via
.Em log_output
is all that is required.
.It log_output
If set,
.Nm sudo
will run the command in a
.Em pseudo tty
and log all output that is sent to the screen, similar to the
.Xr script 1
command.
If the standard output or standard error is not connected to the
user's tty, due to I/O redirection or because the command is part
of a pipeline, that output is also captured and stored in separate
log files.
.Pp
Output is logged to the directory specified by the
.Em iolog_dir
option
.Po
.Pa /var/log/sudo-io
by default
.Pc
using a unique session ID that is included in the normal
.Nm sudo
log line, prefixed with
.Dq Li TSID= .
The
.Em iolog_file
option may be used to control the format of the session ID.
.Pp
Output logs may be viewed with the
.Xr sudoreplay 8
utility, which can also be used to list or search the available logs.
.It log_year
If set, the four-digit year will be logged in the (non-syslog)
.Nm sudo
log file.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It long_otp_prompt
When validating with a One Time Password (OTP) scheme such as
.Sy S/Key
or
.Sy OPIE ,
a two-line prompt is used to make it easier
to cut and paste the challenge to a local window.
It's not as pretty as the default but some people find it more convenient.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It mail_always
Send mail to the
.Em mailto
user every time a users runs
.Nm sudo .
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It mail_badpass
Send mail to the
.Em mailto
user if the user running
.Nm sudo
does not enter the correct password.
If the command the user is attempting to run is not permitted by
.Em sudoers
and one of the
.Em mail_always ,
.Em mail_no_host ,
.Em mail_no_perms
or
.Em mail_no_user
flags are set, this flag will have no effect.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It mail_no_host
If set, mail will be sent to the
.Em mailto
user if the invoking user exists in the
.Em sudoers
file, but is not allowed to run commands on the current host.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It mail_no_perms
If set, mail will be sent to the
.Em mailto
user if the invoking user is allowed to use
.Nm sudo
but the command they are trying is not listed in their
.Em sudoers
file entry or is explicitly denied.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It mail_no_user
If set, mail will be sent to the
.Em mailto
user if the invoking user is not in the
.Em sudoers
file.
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It noexec
If set, all commands run via
.Nm sudo
will behave as if the
.Li NOEXEC
tag has been set, unless overridden by a
.Li EXEC
tag.
See the description of
.Em NOEXEC and EXEC
below as well as the
.Sx Preventing shell escapes
section at the end of this manual.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It pam_session
On systems that use PAM for authentication,
.Nm sudo
will create a new PAM session for the command to be run in.
Disabling
.Em pam_session
may be needed on older PAM implementations or on operating systems where
opening a PAM session changes the utmp or wtmp files.
If PAM session support is disabled, resource limits may not be updated
for the command being run.
If
.Em pam_session ,
.Em pam_setcred ,
and
.Em use_pty
are disabled and I/O logging has not been configured,
.Nm sudo
will execute the command directly instead of running it as a child
process.
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.Pp
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.7 or higher.
.It pam_setcred
On systems that use PAM for authentication,
.Nm sudo
will attempt to establish credentials for the target user by default,
if supported by the underlying authentication system.
One example of a credential is a Kerberos ticket.
If
.Em pam_session ,
.Em pam_setcred ,
and
.Em use_pty
are disabled and I/O logging has not been configured,
.Nm sudo
will execute the command directly instead of running it as a child
process.
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.Pp
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.8 or higher.
.It passprompt_override
The password prompt specified by
.Em passprompt
will normally only be used if the password prompt provided by systems
such as PAM matches the string
.Dq Password: .
If
.Em passprompt_override
is set,
.Em passprompt
will always be used.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It path_info
Normally,
.Nm sudo
will tell the user when a command could not be
found in their
.Ev PATH
environment variable.
Some sites may wish to disable this as it could be used to gather
information on the location of executables that the normal user does
not have access to.
The disadvantage is that if the executable is simply not in the user's
.Ev PATH ,
.Nm sudo
will tell the user that they are not allowed to run it, which can be confusing.
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It preserve_groups
By default,
.Nm sudo
will initialize the group vector to the list of groups the target user is in.
When
.Em preserve_groups
is set, the user's existing group vector is left unaltered.
The real and effective group IDs, however, are still set to match the
target user.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It pwfeedback
By default,
.Nm sudo
reads the password like most other Unix programs,
by turning off echo until the user hits the return (or enter) key.
Some users become confused by this as it appears to them that
.Nm sudo
has hung at this point.
When
.Em pwfeedback
is set,
.Nm sudo
will provide visual feedback when the user presses a key.
Note that this does have a security impact as an onlooker may be able to
determine the length of the password being entered.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It requiretty
If set,
.Nm sudo
will only run when the user is logged in to a real tty.
When this flag is set,
.Nm sudo
can only be run from a login session and not via other means such as
.Xr cron 8
or cgi-bin scripts.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It root_sudo
If set, root is allowed to run
.Nm sudo
too.
Disabling this prevents users from
.Dq chaining
.Nm sudo
commands to get a root shell by doing something like
.Dq Li sudo sudo /bin/sh .
Note, however, that turning off
.Em root_sudo
will also prevent root from running
.Nm sudoedit .
Disabling
.Em root_sudo
provides no real additional security; it exists purely for historical reasons.
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It rootpw
If set,
.Nm sudo
will prompt for the root password instead of the password of the invoking user
when running a command or editing a file.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It runaspw
If set,
.Nm sudo
will prompt for the password of the user defined by the
.Em runas_default
option (defaults to
.Li root )
instead of the password of the invoking user
when running a command or editing a file.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It set_home
If enabled and
.Nm sudo
is invoked with the
.Fl s
option the
.Ev HOME
environment variable will be set to the home directory of the target
user (which is root unless the
.Fl u
option is used).
This effectively makes the
.Fl s
option imply
.Fl H .
Note that
.Ev HOME
is already set when the
.Em env_reset
option is enabled, so
.Em set_home
is only effective for configurations where either
.Em env_reset
is disabled
or
.Ev HOME
is present in the
.Em env_keep
list.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It set_logname
Normally,
.Nm sudo
will set the
.Ev LOGNAME ,
.Ev USER
and
.Ev USERNAME
environment variables to the name of the target user (usually root unless the
.Fl u
option is given).
However, since some programs (including the RCS revision control system) use
.Ev LOGNAME
to determine the real identity of the user, it may be desirable to
change this behavior.
This can be done by negating the set_logname option.
Note that if the
.Em env_reset
option has not been disabled, entries in the
.Em env_keep
list will override the value of
.Em set_logname .
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It set_utmp
When enabled,
.Nm sudo
will create an entry in the utmp (or utmpx) file when a pseudo-tty
is allocated.
A pseudo-tty is allocated by
.Nm sudo
when the
.Em log_input ,
.Em log_output
or
.Em use_pty
flags are enabled.
By default, the new entry will be a copy of the user's existing utmp
entry (if any), with the tty, time, type and pid fields updated.
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It setenv
Allow the user to disable the
.Em env_reset
option from the command line via the
.Fl E
option.
Additionally, environment variables set via the command line are
not subject to the restrictions imposed by
.Em env_check ,
.Em env_delete ,
or
.Em env_keep .
As such, only trusted users should be allowed to set variables in this manner.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It shell_noargs
If set and
.Nm sudo
is invoked with no arguments it acts as if the
.Fl s
option had been given.
That is, it runs a shell as root (the shell is determined by the
.Ev SHELL
environment variable if it is set, falling back on the shell listed
in the invoking user's /etc/passwd entry if not).
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It stay_setuid
Normally, when
.Nm sudo
executes a command the real and effective UIDs are set to the target
user (root by default).
This option changes that behavior such that the real UID is left
as the invoking user's UID.
In other words, this makes
.Nm sudo
act as a setuid wrapper.
This can be useful on systems that disable some potentially
dangerous functionality when a program is run setuid.
This option is only effective on systems that support either the
.Xr setreuid 2
or
.Xr setresuid 2
system call.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It sudoedit_checkdir
If set,
.Nm sudoedit
will refuse to edit files located in a directory that is writable
by the invoking user unless it is run by root.
On many systems, this option requires that the parent directory
of the file to be edited be readable by the target user.
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It sudoedit_follow
By default,
.Nm sudoedit
will not follow symbolic links when opening files.
The
.Em sudoedit_follow
option can be enabled to allow
.Nm sudoedit
to open symbolic links.
It may be overridden on a per-command basis by the
.Em FOLLOW
and
.Em NOFOLLOW
tags.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.Pp
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.10p3\-1+deb8u3 or higher.
.It targetpw
If set,
.Nm sudo
will prompt for the password of the user specified
by the
.Fl u
option (defaults to
.Li root )
instead of the password of the invoking user
when running a command or editing a file.
Note that this flag precludes the use of a uid not listed in the passwd
database as an argument to the
.Fl u
option.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It tty_tickets
If set, users must authenticate on a per-tty basis.
With this flag enabled,
.Nm sudo
will use a separate record in the time stamp file for each tty.
If disabled, a single record is used for all login sessions.
This flag is
.Em on
by default.
.It umask_override
If set,
.Nm sudo
will set the umask as specified by
.Em sudoers
without modification.
This makes it possible to specify a more permissive umask in
.Em sudoers
than the user's own umask and matches historical behavior.
If
.Em umask_override
is not set,
.Nm sudo
will set the umask to be the union of the user's umask and what is specified in
.Em sudoers .
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
If set,
.Nm sudo
will run the command in a pseudo-pty even if no I/O logging is being gone.
A malicious program run under
.Nm sudo
could conceivably fork a background process that retains to the user's
terminal device after the main program has finished executing.
Use of this option will make that impossible.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It utmp_runas
If set,
.Nm sudo
will store the name of the runas user when updating the utmp (or utmpx) file.
By default,
.Nm sudo
stores the name of the invoking user.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.It visiblepw
By default,
.Nm sudo
will refuse to run if the user must enter a password but it is not
possible to disable echo on the terminal.
If the
.Em visiblepw
flag is set,
.Nm sudo
will prompt for a password even when it would be visible on the screen.
This makes it possible to run things like
.Dq Li ssh somehost sudo ls
since by default,
.Xr ssh 1
does
not allocate a tty when running a command.
This flag is
.Em off
by default.
.El
.Pp
.Sy Integers :
.Bl -tag -width 16n
.It closefrom
Before it executes a command,
.Nm sudo
will close all open file descriptors other than standard input,
standard output and standard error (ie: file descriptors 0-2).
The
.Em closefrom
option can be used to specify a different file descriptor at which
to start closing.
The default is
.Li 3 .
.It passwd_tries
The number of tries a user gets to enter his/her password before
.Nm sudo
logs the failure and exits.
The default is
.Li 3 .
.El
.Pp
.Sy Integers that can be used in a boolean context :
.Bl -tag -width 16n
.It loglinelen
Number of characters per line for the file log.
This value is used to decide when to wrap lines for nicer log files.
This has no effect on the syslog log file, only the file log.
The default is
.Li 80
(use 0 or negate the option to disable word wrap).
.It passwd_timeout
Number of minutes before the
.Nm sudo
password prompt times out, or
.Li 0
for no timeout.
The timeout may include a fractional component
if minute granularity is insufficient, for example
.Li 2.5 .
The
default is
.Li 0 .
.It timestamp_timeout
Number of minutes that can elapse before
.Nm sudo
will ask for a passwd again.
The timeout may include a fractional component if
minute granularity is insufficient, for example
.Li 2.5 .
The default is
.Li 15 .
Set this to
.Li 0
to always prompt for a password.
If set to a value less than
.Li 0
the user's time stamp will never expire.
This can be used to allow users to create or delete their own time stamps via
.Dq Li sudo -v
and
.Dq Li sudo -k
respectively.
.It umask
Umask to use when running the command.
Negate this option or set it to 0777 to preserve the user's umask.
The actual umask that is used will be the union of the user's umask
and the value of the
.Em umask
option, which defaults to
.Li 0022 .
This guarantees
that
.Nm sudo
never lowers the umask when running a command.
Note: on systems that use PAM, the default PAM configuration may specify
its own umask which will override the value set in
.Em sudoers .
.El
.Pp
.Sy Strings :
.Bl -tag -width 16n
.It badpass_message
Message that is displayed if a user enters an incorrect password.
The default is
.Li Sorry, try again.
unless insults are enabled.
.It editor
A colon
.Pq Ql :\&
separated list of editors allowed to be used with
.Nm visudo .
.Nm visudo
will choose the editor that matches the user's
.Ev EDITOR
environment variable if possible, or the first editor in the
list that exists and is executable.
The default is
.Pa /usr/local/bin/vi .
.It iolog_dir
The top-level directory to use when constructing the path name for
the input/output log directory.
Only used if the
.Em log_input
or
.Em log_output
options are enabled or when the
.Li LOG_INPUT
or
.Li LOG_OUTPUT
tags are present for a command.
The session sequence number, if any, is stored in the directory.
The default is
.Pa /var/log/sudo-io .
.Pp
The following percent
.Pq Ql %
escape sequences are supported:
.Bl -tag -width 4n
.It Li %{seq}
expanded to a monotonically increasing base-36 sequence number, such as 0100A5,
where every two digits are used to form a new directory, e.g.\&
.Pa 01/00/A5
.It Li %{user}
expanded to the invoking user's login name
.It Li %{group}
expanded to the name of the invoking user's real group ID
.It Li %{runas_user}
expanded to the login name of the user the command will
be run as (e.g.\& root)
.It Li %{runas_group}
expanded to the group name of the user the command will
be run as (e.g.\& wheel)
.It Li %{hostname}
expanded to the local host name without the domain name
.It Li %{command}
expanded to the base name of the command being run
.El
.Pp
In addition, any escape sequences supported by the system's
.Xr strftime 3
function will be expanded.
.Pp
To include a literal
.Ql %
character, the string
.Ql %%
should be used.
.It iolog_file
The path name, relative to
.Em iolog_dir ,
in which to store input/output logs when the
.Em log_input
or
.Em log_output
options are enabled or when the
.Li LOG_INPUT
or
.Li LOG_OUTPUT
tags are present for a command.
Note that
.Em iolog_file
may contain directory components.
The default is
.Dq Li %{seq} .
.Pp
See the
.Em iolog_dir
option above for a list of supported percent
.Pq Ql %
escape sequences.
.Pp
In addition to the escape sequences, path names that end in six or
more
.Li X Ns s
will have the
.Li X Ns s
replaced with a unique combination of digits and letters, similar to the
.Xr mktemp 3
function.
.Pp
If the path created by concatenating
.Em iolog_dir
and
.Em iolog_file
already exists, the existing I/O log file will be truncated and
overwritten unless
.Em iolog_file
ends in six or
more
.Li X Ns s .
.It lecture_status_dir
The directory in which
.Nm sudo
stores per-user lecture status files.
Once a user has received the lecture, a zero-length file is
created in this directory so that
.Nm sudo
will not lecture the user again.
This directory should
.Em not
be cleared when the system reboots.
The default is
.Pa /var/lib/sudo/lectured .
.It mailsub
Subject of the mail sent to the
.Em mailto
user.
The escape
.Li %h
will expand to the host name of the machine.
Default is
.Dq Li *** SECURITY information for %h *** .
.It maxseq
The maximum sequence number that will be substituted for the
.Dq Li %{seq}
escape in the I/O log file (see the
.Em iolog_dir
description above for more information).
While the value substituted for
.Dq Li %{seq}
is in base 36,
.Em maxseq
itself should be expressed in decimal.
Values larger than 2176782336 (which corresponds to the
base 36 sequence number
.Dq ZZZZZZ )
will be silently truncated to 2176782336.
The default value is 2176782336.
.Pp
Once the local sequence number reaches the value of
.Em maxseq ,
it will
.Dq roll over
to zero, after which
.Nm sudoers
will truncate and re-use any existing I/O log path names.
.Pp
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.7 or higher.
.It noexec_file
As of
.Nm sudo
version 1.8.1 this option is no longer supported.
The path to the noexec file should now be set in the
.Xr sudo.conf 5
file.
.It pam_login_service
On systems that use PAM for authentication, this is the service
name used when the
.Fl i
option is specified.
The default value is
.Dq Li sudo .
See the description of
.Em pam_service
for more information.
.Pp
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.8 or higher.
.It pam_service
On systems that use PAM for authentication, the service name
specifies the PAM policy to apply.
This usually corresponds to an entry in the
.Pa pam.conf
file or a file in the
.Pa /etc/pam.d
directory.
The default value is
.Dq Li sudo .
.Pp
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.8 or higher.
.It passprompt
The default prompt to use when asking for a password; can be overridden via the
.Fl p
option or the
.Ev SUDO_PROMPT
environment variable.
The following percent
.Pq Ql %
escape sequences are supported:
.Bl -tag -width 4n
.It Li %H
expanded to the local host name including the domain name
(only if the machine's host name is fully qualified or the
.Em fqdn
option is set)
.It Li %h
expanded to the local host name without the domain name
.It Li %p
expanded to the user whose password is being asked for (respects the
.Em rootpw ,
.Em targetpw
and
.Em runaspw
flags in
.Em sudoers )
.It Li \&%U
expanded to the login name of the user the command will
be run as (defaults to root)
.It Li %u
expanded to the invoking user's login name
.It Li %%
two consecutive
.Li %
characters are collapsed into a single
.Li %
character
.El
.Pp
The default value is
.Dq Li [sudo] password for %p:  .
The default SELinux role to use when constructing a new security
context to run the command.
The default role may be overridden on a per-command basis in
.Em sudoers
or via command line options.
This option is only available when
.Nm sudo
is built with SELinux support.
.It runas_default
The default user to run commands as if the
.Fl u
option is not specified on the command line.
This defaults to
.Li root .
.It syslog_badpri
Syslog priority to use when user authenticates unsuccessfully.
Defaults to
.Li alert .
.Pp
The following syslog priorities are supported:
.Sy alert ,
.Sy crit ,
.Sy debug ,
.Sy emerg ,
.Sy err ,
.Sy info ,
.Sy notice ,
and
.Sy warning .
.It syslog_goodpri
Syslog priority to use when user authenticates successfully.
Defaults to
.Li notice .
.Pp
See
.Em syslog_badpri
for the list of supported syslog priorities.
.It sudoers_locale
Locale to use when parsing the sudoers file, logging commands, and
sending email.
Note that changing the locale may affect how sudoers is interpreted.
Defaults to
.Dq Li C .
.It timestampdir
The directory in which
.Nm sudo
stores its time stamp files.
This directory should be cleared when the system reboots.
The default is
.Pa /var/lib/sudo/ts .
.It timestampowner
The owner of the lecture status directory, time stamp directory and all
files stored therein.
The default is
.Li root .
.It type
The default SELinux type to use when constructing a new security
context to run the command.
The default type may be overridden on a per-command basis in
.Em sudoers
or via command line options.
This option is only available when
.Nm sudo
is built with SELinux support.
.El
.Pp
.Sy Strings that can be used in a boolean context :
.Bl -tag -width 12n
.It env_file
The
.Em env_file
option specifies the fully qualified path to a file containing variables
to be set in the environment of the program being run.
Entries in this file should either be of the form
.Dq Li VARIABLE=value
or
.Dq Li export VARIABLE=value .
The value may optionally be surrounded by single or double quotes.
Variables in this file are subject to other
.Nm sudo
environment settings such as
.Em env_keep
and
.Em env_check .
.It exempt_group
Users in this group are exempt from password and PATH requirements.
The group name specified should not include a
.Li %
prefix.
This is not set by default.
.It group_plugin
A string containing a
.Em sudoers
group plugin with optional arguments.
The string should consist of the plugin
path, either fully-qualified or relative to the
.Pa /usr/lib/sudo
directory, followed by any configuration arguments the plugin requires.
These arguments (if any) will be passed to the plugin's initialization function.
If arguments are present, the string must be enclosed in double quotes
.Pq \&"" .
.Pp
For more information see
.Xr "GROUP PROVIDER PLUGINS" .
.It lecture
This option controls when a short lecture will be printed along with
the password prompt.
It has the following possible values:
.Bl -tag -width 6n
.It always
Always lecture the user.
.It never
Never lecture the user.
.It once
Only lecture the user the first time they run
.Nm sudo .
.El
.Pp
If no value is specified, a value of
.Em once
is implied.
Negating the option results in a value of
.Em never
being used.
The default value is
.Em once .
.It lecture_file
Path to a file containing an alternate
.Nm sudo
lecture that will be used in place of the standard lecture if the named
file exists.
By default,
.Nm sudo
uses a built-in lecture.
.It listpw
This option controls when a password will be required when a user runs
.Nm sudo
with the
.Fl l
option.
It has the following possible values:
.Bl -tag -width 8n
.It all
All the user's
.Em sudoers
entries for the current host must have
the
.Li NOPASSWD
flag set to avoid entering a password.
.It always
The user must always enter a password to use the
.Fl l
option.
.It any
At least one of the user's
.Em sudoers
entries for the current host
must have the
.Li NOPASSWD
flag set to avoid entering a password.
.It never
The user need never enter a password to use the
.Fl l
option.
.El
.Pp
If no value is specified, a value of
.Em any
is implied.
Negating the option results in a value of
.Em never
being used.
The default value is
.Em any .
.It logfile
Path to the
.Nm sudo
log file (not the syslog log file).
Setting a path turns on logging to a file;
negating this option turns it off.
By default,
.Nm sudo
logs via syslog.
.It mailerflags
Flags to use when invoking mailer. Defaults to
.Fl t .
.It mailerpath
Path to mail program used to send warning mail.
Defaults to the path to sendmail found at configure time.
.It mailfrom
Address to use for the
.Dq from
address when sending warning and error mail.
The address should be enclosed in double quotes
.Pq \&""
to protect against
.Nm sudo
interpreting the
.Li @
sign.
Defaults to the name of the user running
.Nm sudo .
.It mailto
Address to send warning and error mail to.
The address should be enclosed in double quotes
.Pq \&""
to protect against
.Nm sudo
interpreting the
.Li @
sign.
Defaults to
.Li root .
.It secure_path
Path used for every command run from
.Nm sudo .
If you don't trust the
people running
.Nm sudo
to have a sane
.Ev PATH
environment variable you may want to use this.
Another use is if you want to have the
.Dq root path
be separate from the
.Dq user path .
Users in the group specified by the
.Em exempt_group
option are not affected by
.Em secure_path .
This option is not set by default.
.It syslog
Syslog facility if syslog is being used for logging (negate to
disable syslog logging).
Defaults to
.Li authpriv .
.Pp
The following syslog facilities are supported:
.Sy authpriv
(if your
OS supports it),
.Sy auth ,
.Sy daemon ,
.Sy user ,
.Sy local0 ,
.Sy local1 ,
.Sy local2 ,
.Sy local3 ,
.Sy local4 ,
.Sy local5 ,
.Sy local6 ,
and
.Sy local7 .
.It verifypw
This option controls when a password will be required when a user runs
.Nm sudo
with the
.Fl v
option.
It has the following possible values:
.Bl -tag -width 6n
.It all
All the user's
.Em sudoers
entries for the current host must have the
.Li NOPASSWD
flag set to avoid entering a password.
.It always
The user must always enter a password to use the
.Fl v
option.
.It any
At least one of the user's
.Em sudoers
entries for the current host must have the
.Li NOPASSWD
flag set to avoid entering a password.
.It never
The user need never enter a password to use the
.Fl v
option.
.El
.Pp
If no value is specified, a value of
.Em all
is implied.
Negating the option results in a value of
.Em never
being used.
The default value is
.Em all .
.El
.Pp
.Sy Lists that can be used in a boolean context :
.Bl -tag -width 16n
.It env_check
Environment variables to be removed from the user's environment
unless they are considered
.Dq safe .
For all variables except
.Li TZ ,
.Dq safe
means that the variable's value does not contain any
.Ql %
or
.Ql /
characters.
This can be used to guard against printf-style format vulnerabilities
in poorly-written programs.
The
.Li TZ 
variable is considered unsafe if any of the following are true:
.Bl -bullet
.It
It consists of a fully-qualified path name,
optionally prefixed with a colon
.Pq Ql :\& ,
that does not match the location of the
.Pa zoneinfo
directory.
.It
It contains a
.Pa ..
path element.
.It
It contains white space or non-printable characters.
.It
It is longer than the value of
.Li PATH_MAX .
.El
.Pp
The argument may be a double-quoted, space-separated list or a
single value without double-quotes.
The list can be replaced, added to, deleted from, or disabled by using
the
.Li = ,
.Li += ,
.Li -= ,
and
.Li \&!
operators respectively.
Regardless of whether the
.Li env_reset
option is enabled or disabled, variables specified by
.Li env_check
will be preserved in the environment if they pass the aforementioned check.
The default list of environment variables to check is displayed when
.Nm sudo
is run by root with
the
.Fl V
option.
.It env_delete
Environment variables to be removed from the user's environment when the
.Em env_reset
option is not in effect.
The argument may be a double-quoted, space-separated list or a
single value without double-quotes.
The list can be replaced, added to, deleted from, or disabled by using the
.Li = ,
.Li += ,
.Li -= ,
and
.Li \&!
operators respectively.
The default list of environment variables to remove is displayed when
.Nm sudo
is run by root with the
.Fl V
option.
Note that many operating systems will remove potentially dangerous
variables from the environment of any setuid process (such as
.Nm sudo ) .
.It env_keep
Environment variables to be preserved in the user's environment when the
.Em env_reset
option is in effect.
This allows fine-grained control over the environment
.Nm sudo Ns -spawned
processes will receive.
The argument may be a double-quoted, space-separated list or a
single value without double-quotes.
The list can be replaced, added to, deleted from, or disabled by using the
.Li = ,
.Li += ,
.Li -= ,
and
.Li \&!
operators respectively.
The default list of variables to keep
is displayed when
.Nm sudo
is run by root with the
.Fl V
option.
.El
.Sh GROUP PROVIDER PLUGINS
The
.Nm sudoers
plugin supports its own plugin interface to allow non-Unix
group lookups which can query a group source other
than the standard Unix group database.
This can be used to implement support for the
.Li nonunix_group
syntax described earlier.
.Pp
Group provider plugins are specified via the
.Em group_plugin
Defaults setting.
The argument to
.Em group_plugin
should consist of the plugin path, either fully-qualified or relative to the
.Pa /usr/lib/sudo
directory, followed by any configuration options the plugin requires.
These options (if specified) will be passed to the plugin's initialization
function.
If options are present, the string must be enclosed in double quotes
.Pq \&"" .
.Pp
The following group provider plugins are installed by default:
.Bl -tag -width 8n
.It group_file
The
.Em group_file
plugin supports an alternate group file that uses the same syntax as the
.Pa /etc/group
file.
The path to the group file should be specified as an option
to the plugin.
For example, if the group file to be used is
.Pa /etc/sudo-group :
.Bd -literal
Defaults group_plugin="group_file.so /etc/sudo-group"
.Ed
.It system_group
The
.Em system_group
plugin supports group lookups via the standard C library functions
.Fn getgrnam
and
.Fn getgrid .
This plugin can be used in instances where the user belongs to
groups not present in the user's supplemental group vector.
This plugin takes no options:
.Bd -literal
Defaults group_plugin=system_group.so
.Ed
.El
.Pp
The group provider plugin API is described in detail in
.Xr sudo_plugin 8 .
.Sh LOG FORMAT
.Nm sudoers
can log events using either
.Xr syslog 3
or a simple log file.
In each case the log format is almost identical.
.Ss Accepted command log entries
Commands that sudo runs are logged using the following format (split
into multiple lines for readability):
.Bd -literal -offset 4n
date hostname progname: username : TTY=ttyname ; PWD=cwd ; \e
    USER=runasuser ; GROUP=runasgroup ; TSID=logid ; \e
    ENV=env_vars COMMAND=command
.Ed
.Pp
Where the fields are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width 12n
.It date
The date the command was run.
Typically, this is in the format
.Dq MMM, DD, HH:MM:SS .
If logging via
.Xr syslog 3 ,
the actual date format is controlled by the syslog daemon.
If logging to a file and the
.Em log_year
option is enabled,
the date will also include the year.
.It hostname
The name of the host
.Nm sudo
was run on.
This field is only present when logging via
.Xr syslog 3 .
.It progname
The name of the program, usually
.Em sudo
or
.Em sudoedit .
This field is only present when logging via
.Xr syslog 3 .
.It username
The login name of the user who ran
.Nm sudo .
.It ttyname
The short name of the terminal (e.g.\&
.Dq console ,
.Dq tty01 ,
or
.Dq pts/0 )
.Nm sudo
was run on, or
.Dq unknown
if there was no terminal present.
.It cwd
The current working directory that
.Nm sudo
was run in.
.It runasuser
The user the command was run as.
.It runasgroup
The group the command was run as if one was specified on the command line.
.It logid
An I/O log identifier that can be used to replay the command's output.
This is only present when the
.Em log_input
or
.Em log_output
option is enabled.
.It env_vars
A list of environment variables specified on the command line,
if specified.
.It command
The actual command that was executed.
.El
.Pp
Messages are logged using the locale specified by
.Em sudoers_locale ,
which defaults to the
.Dq Li C
locale.
.Ss Denied command log entries
If the user is not allowed to run the command, the reason for the denial
will follow the user name.
Possible reasons include:
.Bl -tag -width 4
.It user NOT in sudoers
The user is not listed in the
.Em sudoers
file.
.It user NOT authorized on host
The user is listed in the
.Em sudoers
file but is not allowed to run commands on the host.
.It command not allowed
The user is listed in the
.Em sudoers
file for the host but they are not allowed to run the specified command.
.It 3 incorrect password attempts
The user failed to enter their password after 3 tries.
The actual number of tries will vary based on the number of
failed attempts and the value of the
.Em passwd_tries
option.
.It a password is required
.Nm sudo Ns 's
.Fl n
option was specified but a password was required.
.It sorry, you are not allowed to set the following environment variables
The user specified environment variables on the command line that
were not allowed by
.Em sudoers .
.El
.Ss Error log entries
If an error occurs,
.Nm sudoers
will log a message and, in most cases, send a message to the
administrator via email.
Possible errors include:
.Bl -tag -width 4
.It parse error in /etc/sudoers near line N
.Nm sudoers
encountered an error when parsing the specified file.
In some cases, the actual error may be one line above or below the
line number listed, depending on the type of error.
.It problem with defaults entries
The
.Em sudoers
file contains one or more unknown Defaults settings.
This does not prevent
.Nm sudo
from running, but the
.Em sudoers
file should be checked using
.Nm visudo .
.It timestamp owner (username): \&No such user
The time stamp directory owner, as specified by the
.Em timestampowner
setting, could not be found in the password database.
.It unable to open/read /etc/sudoers
The
.Em sudoers
file could not be opened for reading.
This can happen when the
.Em sudoers
file is located on a remote file system that maps user ID 0 to
a different value.
Normally,
.Nm sudoers
tries to open
.Em sudoers
using group permissions to avoid this problem.
Consider either changing the ownership of
.Pa /etc/sudoers
or adding an argument like
.Dq sudoers_uid=N
(where
.Sq N
is the user ID that owns the
.Em sudoers
file) to the end of the
.Nm sudoers
.Li Plugin
line in the
.Xr sudo.conf 5
file.
.It unable to stat /etc/sudoers
The
.Pa /etc/sudoers
file is missing.
.It /etc/sudoers is not a regular file
The
.Pa /etc/sudoers
file exists but is not a regular file or symbolic link.
.It /etc/sudoers is owned by uid N, should be 0
The
.Em sudoers
file has the wrong owner.
If you wish to change the
.Em sudoers
file owner, please add
.Dq sudoers_uid=N
(where
.Sq N
is the user ID that owns the
.Em sudoers
file) to the
.Nm sudoers
.Li Plugin
line in the
.Xr sudo.conf 5
file.
.It /etc/sudoers is world writable
The permissions on the
.Em sudoers
file allow all users to write to it.
The
.Em sudoers
file must not be world-writable, the default file mode
is 0440 (readable by owner and group, writable by none).
The default mode may be changed via the
.Dq sudoers_mode
option to the
.Nm sudoers
.Li Plugin
line in the
.Xr sudo.conf 5
file.
.It /etc/sudoers is owned by gid N, should be 1
The
.Em sudoers
file has the wrong group ownership.
If you wish to change the
.Em sudoers
file group ownership, please add
.Dq sudoers_gid=N
(where
.Sq N
is the group ID that owns the
.Em sudoers
file) to the
.Nm sudoers
.Li Plugin
line in the
.Xr sudo.conf 5
file.
.It unable to open /var/lib/sudo/ts/username
.Em sudoers
was unable to read or create the user's time stamp file.
This can happen when
.Em timestampowner
is set to a user other than root and the mode on
.Pa /var/lib/sudo
is not searchable by group or other.
The default mode for
.Pa /var/lib/sudo
is 0711.
.It unable to write to /var/lib/sudo/ts/username
.Em sudoers
was unable to write to the user's time stamp file.
.It /var/lib/sudo/ts is owned by uid X, should be Y
The time stamp directory is owned by a user other than
.Em timestampowner .
This can occur when the value of
.Em timestampowner
has been changed.
.Em sudoers
will ignore the time stamp directory until the owner is corrected.
.It /var/lib/sudo/ts is group writable
The time stamp directory is group-writable; it should be writable only by
.Em timestampowner .
The default mode for the time stamp directory is 0700.
.Em sudoers
will ignore the time stamp directory until the mode is corrected.
.El
.Ss Notes on logging via syslog
By default,
.Em sudoers
logs messages via
.Xr syslog 3 .
The
.Em date ,
.Em hostname ,
and
.Em progname
fields are added by the syslog daemon, not
.Em sudoers
itself.
As such, they may vary in format on different systems.
.Pp
On most systems,
.Xr syslog 3
has a relatively small log buffer.
To prevent the command line arguments from being truncated,
.Nm sudoers
will split up log messages that are larger than 960 characters
(not including the date, hostname, and the string
.Dq sudo ) .
When a message is split, additional parts will include the string
.Dq Pq command continued
after the user name and before the continued command line arguments.
.Ss Notes on logging to a file
If the
.Em logfile
option is set,
.Em sudoers
will log to a local file, such as
.Pa /var/log/sudo .
When logging to a file,
.Em sudoers
uses a format similar to
.Xr syslog 3 ,
with a few important differences:
.Bl -enum
.It
The
.Em progname
and
.Em hostname
fields are not present.
.It
If the
.Em log_year
option is enabled,
the date will also include the year.
.It
Lines that are longer than
.Em loglinelen
characters (80 by default) are word-wrapped and continued on the
next line with a four character indent.
This makes entries easier to read for a human being, but makes it
more difficult to use
.Xr grep 1
on the log files.
If the
.Em loglinelen
option is set to 0 (or negated with a
.Ql \&! ) ,
word wrap will be disabled.
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width 24n
.It Pa /etc/sudo.conf
Sudo front end configuration
.It Pa /etc/sudoers
List of who can run what
.It Pa /etc/group
Local groups file
.It Pa /etc/netgroup
List of network groups
.It Pa /var/log/sudo-io
I/O log files
.It Pa /var/lib/sudo/ts
Directory containing time stamps for the
.Em sudoers
security policy
.It Pa /var/lib/sudo/lectured
Directory containing lecture status files for the
.Em sudoers
security policy
.It Pa /etc/environment
Initial environment for
.Fl i
mode on AIX and Linux systems
.El
.Sh EXAMPLES
Below are example
.Em sudoers
entries.
Admittedly, some of these are a bit contrived.
First, we allow a few environment variables to pass and then define our
.Em aliases :
.Bd -literal
# Run X applications through sudo; HOME is used to find the
# .Xauthority file.  Note that other programs use HOME to find
# configuration files and this may lead to privilege escalation!
Defaults env_keep += "DISPLAY HOME"

# User alias specification
User_Alias	FULLTIMERS = millert, mikef, dowdy
User_Alias	PARTTIMERS = bostley, jwfox, crawl
User_Alias	WEBMASTERS = will, wendy, wim

# Runas alias specification
Runas_Alias	OP = root, operator
Runas_Alias	DB = oracle, sybase
Runas_Alias	ADMINGRP = adm, oper

# Host alias specification
Host_Alias	SPARC = bigtime, eclipse, moet, anchor :\e
		SGI = grolsch, dandelion, black :\e
		ALPHA = widget, thalamus, foobar :\e
		HPPA = boa, nag, python
Host_Alias	CUNETS = 128.138.0.0/255.255.0.0
Host_Alias	CSNETS = 128.138.243.0, 128.138.204.0/24, 128.138.242.0
Host_Alias	SERVERS = master, mail, www, ns
Host_Alias	CDROM = orion, perseus, hercules

# Cmnd alias specification
Cmnd_Alias	DUMPS = /usr/bin/mt, /usr/sbin/dump, /usr/sbin/rdump,\e
			/usr/sbin/restore, /usr/sbin/rrestore,\e
			sha224:0GomF8mNN3wlDt1HD9XldjJ3SNgpFdbjO1+NsQ== \e
			/home/operator/bin/start_backups
Cmnd_Alias	KILL = /usr/bin/kill
Cmnd_Alias	PRINTING = /usr/sbin/lpc, /usr/bin/lprm
Cmnd_Alias	SHUTDOWN = /usr/sbin/shutdown
Cmnd_Alias	HALT = /usr/sbin/halt
Cmnd_Alias	REBOOT = /usr/sbin/reboot
Cmnd_Alias	SHELLS = /usr/bin/sh, /usr/bin/csh, /usr/bin/ksh,\e
			 /usr/local/bin/tcsh, /usr/bin/rsh,\e
			 /usr/local/bin/zsh
Cmnd_Alias	SU = /usr/bin/su
Cmnd_Alias	PAGERS = /usr/bin/more, /usr/bin/pg, /usr/bin/less
.Ed
.Pp
Here we override some of the compiled in default values.
We want
.Nm sudo
to log via
.Xr syslog 3
using the
.Em auth
facility in all cases.
We don't want to subject the full time staff to the
.Nm sudo
lecture, user
.Sy millert
need not give a password, and we don't want to reset the
.Ev LOGNAME ,
.Ev USER
or
.Ev USERNAME
environment variables when running commands as root.
Additionally, on the machines in the
.Em SERVERS
.Li Host_Alias ,
we keep an additional local log file and make sure we log the year
in each log line since the log entries will be kept around for several years.
Lastly, we disable shell escapes for the commands in the PAGERS
.Li Cmnd_Alias
.Po
.Pa /usr/bin/more ,
.Pa /usr/bin/pg
and
.Pa /usr/bin/less
.Pc .
Note that this will not effectively constrain users with
.Nm sudo
.Sy ALL
privileges.
.Bd -literal
# Override built-in defaults
Defaults		syslog=auth
Defaults>root		!set_logname
Defaults:FULLTIMERS	!lecture
Defaults:millert	!authenticate
Defaults@SERVERS	log_year, logfile=/var/log/sudo.log
Defaults!PAGERS		noexec
.Ed
.Pp
The
.Em User specification
is the part that actually determines who may run what.
.Bd -literal
root		ALL = (ALL) ALL
%wheel		ALL = (ALL) ALL
.Ed
.Pp
We let
.Sy root
and any user in group
.Sy wheel
run any command on any host as any user.
.Bd -literal
FULLTIMERS	ALL = NOPASSWD: ALL
.Ed
.Pp
Full time sysadmins
.Po
.Sy millert ,
.Sy mikef ,
and
.Sy dowdy
.Pc
may run any command on any host without authenticating themselves.
.Bd -literal
PARTTIMERS	ALL = ALL
.Ed
.Pp
Part time sysadmins
.Sy bostley ,
.Sy jwfox ,
and
.Sy crawl )
may run any command on any host but they must authenticate themselves
first (since the entry lacks the
.Li NOPASSWD
tag).
.Bd -literal
jack		CSNETS = ALL
.Ed
.Pp
The user
.Sy jack
may run any command on the machines in the
.Em CSNETS
alias (the networks
.Li 128.138.243.0 ,
.Li 128.138.204.0 ,
and
.Li 128.138.242.0 ) .
Of those networks, only
.Li 128.138.204.0
has an explicit netmask (in CIDR notation) indicating it is a class C network.
For the other networks in
.Em CSNETS ,
the local machine's netmask will be used during matching.
.Bd -literal
lisa		CUNETS = ALL
.Ed
.Pp
The user
.Sy lisa
may run any command on any host in the
.Em CUNETS
alias (the class B network
.Li 128.138.0.0 ) .
.Bd -literal
operator	ALL = DUMPS, KILL, SHUTDOWN, HALT, REBOOT, PRINTING,\e
		sudoedit /etc/printcap, /usr/oper/bin/
.Ed
.Pp
The
.Sy operator
user may run commands limited to simple maintenance.
Here, those are commands related to backups, killing processes, the
printing system, shutting down the system, and any commands in the
directory
.Pa /usr/oper/bin/ .
Note that one command in the
.Li DUMPS
Cmnd_Alias includes a sha224 digest,
.Pa /home/operator/bin/start_backups .
This is because the directory containing the script is writable by the
operator user.
If the script is modified (resulting in a digest mismatch) it will no longer
be possible to run it via
.Nm sudo .
.Bd -literal
joe		ALL = /usr/bin/su operator
.Ed
.Pp
The user
.Sy joe
may only
.Xr su 1
to operator.
.Bd -literal
pete		HPPA = /usr/bin/passwd [A-Za-z]*, !/usr/bin/passwd root

%opers		ALL = (: ADMINGRP) /usr/sbin/
.Ed
.Pp
Users in the
.Sy opers
group may run commands in
.Pa /usr/sbin/
as themselves
with any group in the
.Em ADMINGRP
.Li Runas_Alias
(the
.Sy adm
and
.Sy oper
groups).
.Pp
The user
.Sy pete
is allowed to change anyone's password except for
root on the
.Em HPPA
machines.
Note that this assumes
.Xr passwd 1
does not take multiple user names on the command line.
.Bd -literal
bob		SPARC = (OP) ALL : SGI = (OP) ALL
.Ed
.Pp
The user
.Sy bob
may run anything on the
.Em SPARC
and
.Em SGI
machines as any user listed in the
.Em OP
.Li Runas_Alias
.Po
.Sy root
and
.Sy operator .
.Pc
.Bd -literal
jim		+biglab = ALL
.Ed
.Pp
The user
.Sy jim
may run any command on machines in the
.Em biglab
netgroup.
.Nm sudo
knows that
.Dq biglab
is a netgroup due to the
.Ql +
prefix.
.Bd -literal
+secretaries	ALL = PRINTING, /usr/bin/adduser, /usr/bin/rmuser
.Ed
.Pp
Users in the
.Sy secretaries
netgroup need to help manage the printers as well as add and remove users,
so they are allowed to run those commands on all machines.
.Bd -literal
fred		ALL = (DB) NOPASSWD: ALL
.Ed
.Pp
The user
.Sy fred
can run commands as any user in the
.Em DB
.Li Runas_Alias
.Po
.Sy oracle
or
.Sy sybase
.Pc
without giving a password.
.Bd -literal
john		ALPHA = /usr/bin/su [!-]*, !/usr/bin/su *root*
.Ed
.Pp
On the
.Em ALPHA
machines, user
.Sy john
may su to anyone except root but he is not allowed to specify any options
to the
.Xr su 1
command.
.Bd -literal
jen		ALL, !SERVERS = ALL
.Ed
.Pp
The user
.Sy jen
may run any command on any machine except for those in the
.Em SERVERS
.Li Host_Alias
(master, mail, www and ns).
.Bd -literal
jill		SERVERS = /usr/bin/, !SU, !SHELLS
.Ed
.Pp
For any machine in the
.Em SERVERS
.Li Host_Alias ,
.Sy jill
may run
any commands in the directory
.Pa /usr/bin/
except for those commands
belonging to the
.Em SU
and
.Em SHELLS
.Li Cmnd_Aliases .
While not specifically mentioned in the rule, the commands in the
.Em PAGERS
.Li Cmnd_Alias
all reside in
.Pa /usr/bin
and have the
.Em noexec
option set.
.Bd -literal
steve		CSNETS = (operator) /usr/local/op_commands/
.Ed
.Pp
The user
.Sy steve
may run any command in the directory /usr/local/op_commands/
but only as user operator.
.Bd -literal
matt		valkyrie = KILL
.Ed
.Pp
On his personal workstation, valkyrie,
.Sy matt
needs to be able to kill hung processes.
.Bd -literal
WEBMASTERS	www = (www) ALL, (root) /usr/bin/su www
.Ed
.Pp
On the host www, any user in the
.Em WEBMASTERS
.Li User_Alias
(will, wendy, and wim), may run any command as user www (which owns the
web pages) or simply
.Xr su 1
to www.
.Bd -literal
ALL		CDROM = NOPASSWD: /sbin/umount /CDROM,\e
		/sbin/mount -o nosuid\,nodev /dev/cd0a /CDROM
.Ed
.Pp
Any user may mount or unmount a CD-ROM on the machines in the CDROM
.Li Host_Alias
(orion, perseus, hercules) without entering a password.
This is a bit tedious for users to type, so it is a prime candidate
for encapsulating in a shell script.
.Sh SECURITY NOTES
.Ss Limitations of the So !\& Sc operator
It is generally not effective to
.Dq subtract
commands from
.Sy ALL
using the
.Ql !\&
operator.
A user can trivially circumvent this by copying the desired command
to a different name and then executing that.
For example:
.Bd -literal
bill	ALL = ALL, !SU, !SHELLS
.Ed
.Pp
Doesn't really prevent
.Sy bill
from running the commands listed in
.Em SU
or
.Em SHELLS
since he can simply copy those commands to a different name, or use
a shell escape from an editor or other program.
Therefore, these kind of restrictions should be considered
advisory at best (and reinforced by policy).
.Pp
In general, if a user has sudo
.Sy ALL
there is nothing to prevent them from creating their own program that gives
them a root shell (or making their own copy of a shell) regardless of any
.Ql !\&
elements in the user specification.
.Ss Security implications of Em fast_glob
If the
.Em fast_glob
option is in use, it is not possible to reliably negate commands where the
path name includes globbing (aka wildcard) characters.
This is because the C library's
.Xr fnmatch 3
function cannot resolve relative paths.
While this is typically only an inconvenience for rules that grant privileges,
it can result in a security issue for rules that subtract or revoke privileges.
.Pp
For example, given the following
.Em sudoers
entry:
.Bd -literal
john	ALL = /usr/bin/passwd [a-zA-Z0-9]*, /usr/bin/chsh [a-zA-Z0-9]*,\e
              /usr/bin/chfn [a-zA-Z0-9]*, !/usr/bin/* root
.Ed
.Pp
User
.Sy john
can still run
.Li /usr/bin/passwd root
if
.Em fast_glob
is enabled by changing to
.Pa /usr/bin
and running
.Li ./passwd root
instead.
.Ss Preventing shell escapes
Once
.Nm sudo
executes a program, that program is free to do whatever
it pleases, including run other programs.
This can be a security issue since it is not uncommon for a program to
allow shell escapes, which lets a user bypass
.Nm sudo Ns 's
access control and logging.
Common programs that permit shell escapes include shells (obviously),
editors, paginators, mail and terminal programs.
.Pp
There are two basic approaches to this problem:
.Bl -tag -width 8n
.It restrict
Avoid giving users access to commands that allow the user to run
arbitrary commands.
Many editors have a restricted mode where shell
escapes are disabled, though
.Nm sudoedit
is a better solution to
running editors via
.Nm sudo .
Due to the large number of programs that
offer shell escapes, restricting users to the set of programs that
do not is often unworkable.
.It noexec
Many systems that support shared libraries have the ability to
override default library functions by pointing an environment
variable (usually
.Ev LD_PRELOAD )
to an alternate shared library.
On such systems,
.Nm sudo Ns 's
.Em noexec
functionality can be used to prevent a program run by
.Nm sudo
from executing any other programs.
Note, however, that this applies only to native dynamically-linked
executables.
Statically-linked executables and foreign executables
running under binary emulation are not affected.
.Pp
The
.Em noexec
feature is known to work on SunOS, Solaris, *BSD,
Linux, IRIX, Tru64 UNIX, MacOS X, HP-UX 11.x and AIX 5.3 and above.
It should be supported on most operating systems that support the
.Ev LD_PRELOAD
environment variable.
Check your operating system's manual pages for the dynamic linker
(usually ld.so, ld.so.1, dyld, dld.sl, rld, or loader) to see if
.Ev LD_PRELOAD
is supported.
.Pp
To enable
.Em noexec
for a command, use the
.Li NOEXEC
tag as documented
in the User Specification section above.
Here is that example again:
.Bd -literal
aaron	shanty = NOEXEC: /usr/bin/more, /usr/bin/vi
.Ed
.Pp
This allows user
.Sy aaron
to run
.Pa /usr/bin/more
and
.Pa /usr/bin/vi
with
.Em noexec
enabled.
This will prevent those two commands from
executing other commands (such as a shell).
If you are unsure whether or not your system is capable of supporting
.Em noexec
you can always just try it out and check whether shell escapes work when
.Em noexec
is enabled.
.El
.Pp
Note that restricting shell escapes is not a panacea.
Programs running as root are still capable of many potentially hazardous
operations (such as changing or overwriting files) that could lead
to unintended privilege escalation.
In the specific case of an editor, a safer approach is to give the
user permission to run
.Nm sudoedit
(see below).
.Ss Secure editing
The
.Em sudoers
plugin includes
.Nm sudoedit
support which allows users to securely edit files with the editor
of their choice.
As
.Nm sudoedit
is a built-in command, it must be specified in
.Em sudoers
without a leading path.
However, it may take command line arguments just as a normal command does.
For example, to allow user operator to edit the
.Dq message of the day
file:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
operator	sudoedit /etc/motd
.Ed
.Pp
The operator user then runs
.Nm sudoedit
as follows:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ sudoedit /etc/motd
.Ed
.Pp
The editor will run as the operator user, not root, on a temporary copy of
.Pa /etc/motd .
After the file has been edited,
.Pa /etc/motd
will be updated with the contents of the temporary copy.
.Ss Time stamp file checks
.Em sudoers
will check the ownership of its time stamp directory
.Po
.Pa /var/lib/sudo/ts
by default
.Pc
and ignore the directory's contents if it is not owned by root or
if it is writable by a user other than root.
Older versions of
.Nm sudo
stored time stamp files in
.Pa /tmp ;
this is no longer recommended as it may be possible for a user
to create the time stamp themselves on systems that allow
unprivileged users to change the ownership of files they create.
.Pp
While the time stamp directory
.Em should
be cleared at reboot time, not all systems contain a
.Pa /var/run
directory.
To avoid potential problems,
.Em sudoers
will ignore time stamp files that date from before the machine booted
on systems where the boot time is available.
.Pp
Some systems with graphical desktop environments allow unprivileged
users to change the system clock.
Since
.Em sudoers
relies on the system clock for time stamp validation, it may be
possible on such systems for a user to run
.Nm sudo
for longer than
.Em timestamp_timeout
by setting the clock back.
To combat this,
.Em sudoers
uses a monotonic clock (which never moves backwards) for its time stamps
if the system supports it.
.Pp
.Em sudoers
will not honor time stamps set far in the future.
Time stamps with a date greater than current_time + 2 *
.Li TIMEOUT
will be ignored and
.Em sudoers
will log and complain.
.Pp
Since time stamp files live in the file system, they can outlive a
user's login session.
As a result, a user may be able to login, run a command with
.Nm sudo
after authenticating, logout, login again, and run
.Nm sudo
without authenticating so long as the record's time stamp is within
.Li 15
minutes (or whatever value the timeout is set to in
.Em sudoers ) .
When the
.Em tty_tickets
option is enabled, the time stamp record includes the device
number of the terminal the user authenticated with.
This provides per-tty granularity but time stamp records still
may outlive the user's session.
The time stamp record also includes the session ID of the process
that last authenticated.
This prevents processes in different terminal sessions from using
the same time stamp record.
It also helps reduce the chance that a user will be able to run
.Nm sudo
without entering a password when logging out and back in again
on the same terminal.
.Sh DEBUGGING
Versions 1.8.4 and higher of the
.Nm sudoers
plugin support a flexible debugging framework that can help track
down what the plugin is doing internally if there is a problem.
This can be configured in the
.Xr sudo.conf 5
file.
.Pp
The
.Nm sudoers
plugin uses the same debug flag format as the
.Nm sudo
front-end:
.Em subsystem Ns @ Ns Em priority .
.Pp
The priorities used by
.Nm sudoers ,
in order of decreasing severity,
are:
.Em crit , err , warn , notice , diag , info , trace
and
.Em debug .
Each priority, when specified, also includes all priorities higher
than it.
For example, a priority of
.Em notice
would include debug messages logged at
.Em notice
and higher.
.Pp
The following subsystems are used by the
.Nm sudoers
plugin:
.Bl -tag -width 8n
.It Em alias
.Li User_Alias ,
.Li Runas_Alias ,
.Li Host_Alias
and
.Li Cmnd_Alias
processing
.It Em all
matches every subsystem
.It Em audit
BSM and Linux audit code
.It Em auth
user authentication
.It Em defaults
.Em sudoers
.Em Defaults
settings
.It Em env
environment handling
.It Em ldap
LDAP-based sudoers
.It Em logging
logging support
.It Em match
matching of users, groups, hosts and netgroups in
.Em sudoers
.It Em netif
network interface handling
.It Em nss
network service switch handling in
.Em sudoers
.It Em parser
.Em sudoers
file parsing
.It Em perms
permission setting
.It Em plugin
The equivalent of
.Em main
for the plugin.
.It Em pty
pseudo-tty related code
.It Em rbtree
redblack tree internals
.It Em sssd
SSSD-based sudoers
.It Em util
utility functions
.El
For example:
.Bd -literal
Debug sudo /var/log/sudo_debug match@info,nss@info
.Ed
.Pp
For more information, see the
.Xr sudo.conf 5
manual.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr ssh 1 ,
.Xr su 1 ,
.Xr fnmatch 3 ,
.Xr glob 3 ,
.Xr mktemp 3 ,
.Xr strftime 3 ,
.Xr sudo.conf 5 ,
.Xr sudoers.ldap 5 ,
.Xr sudo_plugin 8 ,
.Xr sudo 8 ,
.Xr visudo 8
.Sh CAVEATS
The
.Em sudoers
file should
.Sy always
be edited by the
.Nm visudo
command which locks the file and does grammatical checking.
It is
imperative that
.Em sudoers
be free of syntax errors since
.Nm sudo
will not run with a syntactically incorrect
.Em sudoers
file.
.Pp
When using netgroups of machines (as opposed to users), if you
store fully qualified host name in the netgroup (as is usually the
case), you either need to have the machine's host name be fully qualified
as returned by the
.Li hostname
command or use the
.Em fqdn
option in
.Em sudoers .
.Sh BUGS
If you feel you have found a bug in
.Nm sudo ,
please submit a bug report at http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/bugs/
.Sh SUPPORT
Limited free support is available via the sudo-users mailing list,
see http://www.sudo.ws/mailman/listinfo/sudo-users to subscribe or
search the archives.
.Sh DISCLAIMER
.Nm sudo
is provided
.Dq AS IS
and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited
to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a
particular purpose are disclaimed.
See the LICENSE file distributed with
.Nm sudo
or http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/license.html for complete details.