Ubuntu
sudo package

sudo does not read /etc/environment on interactive logins (directly, not through pam_env)

Bug #25700 reported by Daniel Hahler
16
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
sudo
Unknown
Unknown
sudo (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

sudo (and su) do not work with pam_env.

Adding a line like:
auth required pam_env.so
to /etc/pam.d/sudo should put the environment variables from /etc/environment into the environment of an
interactive session created by "sudo -i" or "su -".

This is especially bad because /etc/environment is the place where Ubuntu defines the charset (with LANG) and
not setting LANG to xx_XX.UTF8 causes the shell (bash) to misbehave on umlauts for example: I cannot type
them on the command line and they're displayed wrong with "ls" and other tools.

Revision history for this message
Martin Pitt (pitti) wrote :

Is that still an issue for you? Normally the sudo shell inherits locale settings from the user's shell, i. e. it preserves the locale.

Changed in sudo:
status: Unconfirmed → Needs Info
Revision history for this message
Sam Morris (yrro) wrote :

According to a thread on sudo-users, sudo < 1.7 doesn't ever call pam_open_session, so PAM session modules such as pam_env, pam_tmpdir and so on are all ignored.

http://www.sudo.ws/pipermail/sudo-users/2005-May/002522.html

Revision history for this message
Daniel Hahler (blueyed) wrote :

I'm not sure if it really preserves the environment using "sudo -i", but I've worked around it by defining LANG in /etc/profile..

Revision history for this message
Martin Pitt (pitti) wrote :

Known upstream and fixed for future 1.7

Changed in sudo:
status: Needs Info → Confirmed
status: Unconfirmed → In Progress
Revision history for this message
Joolz (joolz) wrote :

The problem still exists on Intrepid amd64. I can't believe this isn't fixed yet :(

Revision history for this message
Daniel Hahler (blueyed) wrote :

sudo 1.7.0 has been released on 2008-12-19 and is in Debian unstable already.
Therefore, this is expected to be fixed for Karmic.

Changed in sudo:
status: Confirmed → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Unknown
status: In Progress → Unknown
Revision history for this message
Aidan Furlan (aidan-epochlabs) wrote :

Another workaround is to become root with `sudo su` rather than `sudo -i` or `sudo -u`.

Revision history for this message
Loïc Minier (lool) wrote :

From sudo 1.7.0 WHATSNEW file:
 * Support for /etc/environment on AIX and Linux. If sudo is run
   with the -i flag, the contents of /etc/environment are used to
   populate the new environment that is passed to the command being
   run.

there's a bug in that the contents are taken literally instead of stripping quotes though, bug #387262.

I see some comments requested usage of pam_env in sudo; while that's not entirely unreasonnable, I think it would make it harder to understand why some sudo environment-handlign options don't work as expected.

Changed in sudo (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Fix Released
ceg (ceg)
summary: - sudo does not use /etc/environment on interactive logins (through
- pam_env)
+ sudo does not read /etc/environment on interactive logins (directly, not
+ through pam_env)
Revision history for this message
Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox) wrote :

I wonder if this regressed and/or if my configuration is different from default, because sudo -i does not appear to be reading /etc/environment any more.

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