| SUDOERS(5) | File Formats Manual | SUDOERS(5) |
sudoers — default
sudo security policy plugin
The sudoers policy plugin determines a
user's sudo privileges. It is the default
sudo policy plugin. The policy is driven by the
/etc/sudoers file or, optionally in LDAP. The policy
format is described in detail in the
SUDOERS FILE FORMAT section.
For information on storing sudoers policy
information in LDAP, please see sudoers.ldap(5).
sudo consults the
sudo.conf(5) file to determine which policy and I/O
logging plugins to load. If no sudo.conf(5) file is
present, or if it contains no Plugin lines,
sudoers will be used for policy decisions and I/O
logging. To explicitly configure sudo.conf(5) to use the
sudoers plugin, the following configuration can be
used.
Plugin sudoers_audit sudoers.so Plugin sudoers_policy sudoers.so Plugin sudoers_io sudoers.so
Starting with sudo 1.8.5, it is possible
to specify optional arguments to the sudoers plugin
in the sudo.conf(5) file. Plugin arguments, if any, should
be listed after the path to the plugin (i.e., after
sudoers.so). The arguments are only effective for
the plugin that opens (and parses) the sudoers file.
For sudo version 1.9.1
and higher, this is the
sudoers_audit
plugin. For older versions, it is the
sudoers_policy
plugin. Multiple arguments may be specified, separated by white space. For
example:
Plugin sudoers_audit sudoers.so sudoers_mode=0400 error_recovery=false
The following plugin arguments are supported:
sudoers
should attempt to recover from syntax errors in the
sudoers file. If set to
true
(the default), sudoers will try to recover from a
syntax error by discarding the portion of the line that contains the error
until the end of the line. A value of
false
will disable error recovery. Prior to version 1.9.3, no error recovery was
performed.For more information on configuring sudo.conf(5), please refer to its manual.
The sudoers security policy requires that
most users authenticate themselves before they can use
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
su(1), when 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
rootpw, targetpw and
runaspw flags, described later.
If a user who is not listed in the policy tries to run a command
via sudo, mail is sent to the proper authorities.
The address used for such mail is configurable via the
mailto Defaults entry (described later) and defaults to
root.
Note that no mail will be sent if an unauthorized user tries to
run sudo with the -l or
-v option unless there is an authentication error
and either the mail_always or
mail_badpass flags are enabled. This allows users to
determine for themselves whether or not they are allowed to use
sudo. By default, all attempts to run
sudo (successful or not) are logged, regardless of
whether or not mail is sent.
If sudo is run by root and the
SUDO_USER environment variable is set, the
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
-e option to remain useful even when invoked via a
sudo-run script or program. Note, however, that the
sudoers file lookup is still done for root, not the user
specified by SUDO_USER.
sudoers uses per-user time stamp files for
credential caching. Once a user has been authenticated, a record is written
containing the user-ID that was used to authenticate, the terminal session
ID, the start time of the session leader (or parent process) and a time
stamp (using a monotonic clock if one is available). The user may then use
sudo without a password for a short period of time
(15 minutes unless overridden by the
timestamp_timeout option). By default,
sudoers uses a separate record for each terminal,
which means that a user's login sessions are authenticated separately. The
timestamp_type option can be used to select the type of
time stamp record sudoers will use.
By default, sudoers logs both successful
and unsuccessful attempts (as well as errors). The
log_allowed
and
log_denied
flags can be used to control this behavior. Messages can be logged to
syslog(3), a log file, or both. The default is to log to
syslog(3) but this is configurable via the
syslog and logfile settings. See
LOG FORMAT for a description of the log
file format.
sudoers is also capable of running a
command in a pseudo-terminal and logging all input and/or output. The
standard input, standard output and standard error can be logged even when
not associated with a terminal. I/O logging is not on by default but can be
enabled using the log_input and
log_output options as well as the
LOG_INPUT and LOG_OUTPUT
command tags. See I/O LOG FILES for
details on how I/O log files are stored.
Starting with version 1.9, the log_servers
setting may be used to send event and I/O log data to a remote server
running sudo_logsrvd or another service that
implements the protocol described by
sudo_logsrv.proto(5).
Since environment variables can influence program behavior,
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 sudoers can deal with
environment variables.
By default, the env_reset flag 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 /etc/environment file. The
HOME, MAIL,
SHELL, LOGNAME and
USER environment variables are initialized based on
the target user and the SUDO_* variables are set
based on the invoking user. Additional variables, such as
DISPLAY, PATH and
TERM, are preserved from the invoking user's
environment if permitted by the env_check or
env_keep options. A few environment variables are treated
specially. If the PATH and
TERM variables are not preserved from the user's
environment, they will be set to default values. The
LOGNAME and USER are handled
as a single entity. If one of them is preserved (or removed) from the user's
environment, the other will be as well. If LOGNAME
and USER are to be preserved but only one of them is
present in the user's environment, the other will be set to the same value.
This avoids an inconsistent environment where one of the variables
describing the user name is set to the invoking user and one is set to the
target user. Environment variables with a value beginning with
() are removed unless both the name and value parts
are matched by env_keep or env_check, as
they may be interpreted as functions by the bash shell.
Prior to version 1.8.11, such variables were always removed.
If, however, the env_reset flag is disabled, any
variables not explicitly denied by the env_check and
env_delete options are allowed and their values are
inherited from the invoking process. Prior to version 1.8.21, environment
variables with a value beginning with () were always
removed. Beginning with version 1.8.21, a pattern in
env_delete is used to match bash shell
functions instead. Since it is not possible to block all potentially
dangerous environment variables, use of the default
env_reset behavior is encouraged.
Environment variables specified by env_check,
env_delete, or env_keep may include one
or more ‘*’ characters which will
match zero or more characters. No other wildcard characters are
supported.
By default, environment variables are matched by name. However, if
the pattern includes an equal sign
(‘=’), both the variables name and
value must match. For example, a bash shell function could
be matched as follows:
env_keep += "BASH_FUNC_my_func%%=()*"
Without the “=()*” suffix,
this would not match, as bash shell functions are not
preserved by default.
The complete list of environment variables that are preserved or
removed, as modified by global Defaults parameters in
sudoers, is displayed when sudo is
run by root with the -V option. Please note that the
list of environment variables to remove varies based on the operating system
sudo is running on.
Other sudoers options
may influence the command environment, such as
always_set_home,
secure_path, set_logname, and
set_home.
On systems that support PAM where the
pam_env module is
enabled for sudo, variables in the PAM environment
may be merged in to the environment. If a variable in the PAM environment is
already present in the user's environment, the value will only be overridden
if the variable was not preserved by sudoers. When
env_reset is enabled, variables preserved from the
invoking user's environment by the env_keep list take
precedence over those in the PAM environment. When
env_reset is disabled, variables present the invoking
user's environment take precedence over those in the PAM environment unless
they match a pattern in the env_delete list.
Note that the dynamic linker on most operating systems will remove
variables that can control dynamic linking from the environment of
set-user-ID executables, including sudo. Depending
on the operating system this may include _RLD*,
DYLD_*, LD_*,
LDR_*, LIBPATH,
SHLIB_PATH, and others. These type of variables are
removed from the environment before sudo even begins
execution and, as such, it is not possible for sudo
to preserve them.
As a special case, if the -i option
(initial login) is specified, sudoers will
initialize the environment regardless of the value of
env_reset. The DISPLAY,
PATH and TERM variables
remain unchanged; HOME,
MAIL, SHELL,
USER, and LOGNAME are set
based on the target user. On AIX (and Linux systems without PAM), the
contents of /etc/environment are also included. All
other environment variables are removed unless permitted by
env_keep or env_check, described
above.
Finally, the restricted_env_file and env_file files are applied, if present. The variables in restricted_env_file are applied first and are subject to the same restrictions as the invoking user's environment, as detailed above. The variables in env_file are applied last and are not subject to these restrictions. In both cases, variables present in the files will only be set to their specified values if they would not conflict with an existing environment variable.
The sudoers file is composed of two types of entries: aliases (basically variables) and user specifications (which specify who may run what).
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).
The sudoers file 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.
EBNF is a concise and exact way of describing the grammar of a language. Each EBNF definition is made up of production rules. E.g.,
symbol ::= definition |
alternate1 | alternate2
...
Each 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 “wildcard” characters, which have different meanings.
?*+Parentheses may be used to group symbols together. For clarity, we will use single quotes ('') to designate what is a verbatim character string (as opposed to a symbol name).
There are four kinds of aliases:
User_Alias, Runas_Alias,
Host_Alias and Cmnd_Alias.
Beginning with sudo 1.9.0,
Cmd_Alias may be used in place of
Cmnd_Alias if desired.
Alias ::= 'User_Alias' User_Alias_Spec (':' User_Alias_Spec)* |
'Runas_Alias' Runas_Alias_Spec (':' Runas_Alias_Spec)* |
'Host_Alias' Host_Alias_Spec (':' Host_Alias_Spec)* |
'Cmnd_Alias' Cmnd_Alias_Spec (':' Cmnd_Alias_Spec)* |
'Cmd_Alias' Cmnd_Alias_Spec (':' Cmnd_Alias_Spec)*
User_Alias ::= NAME
User_Alias_Spec ::= User_Alias '=' User_List
Runas_Alias ::= NAME
Runas_Alias_Spec ::= Runas_Alias '=' Runas_List
Host_Alias ::= NAME
Host_Alias_Spec ::= Host_Alias '=' Host_List
Cmnd_Alias ::= NAME
Cmnd_Alias_Spec ::= Cmnd_Alias '=' Cmnd_List
NAME ::= [A-Z]([A-Z][0-9]_)*
Each alias definition is of the form
Alias_Type NAME = item1, item2, ...
where
Alias_Type is
one of User_Alias,
Runas_Alias, Host_Alias, or
Cmnd_Alias. A NAME is a
string of uppercase letters, numbers, and underscore characters
(‘_’). A NAME
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
(‘:’). E.g.,
Alias_Type NAME = item1, item2, item3 : NAME = item4, item5
It is a syntax error to redefine an existing alias. It is possible to use the same name for aliases of different types, but this is not recommended.
The definitions of what constitutes a valid alias member follow.
User_List ::= User |
User ',' User_List
User ::= '!'* user name |
'!'* #uid |
'!'* %group |
'!'* %#gid |
'!'* +netgroup |
'!'* %:nonunix_group |
'!'* %:#nonunix_gid |
'!'* User_Alias
A User_List is made up of one or more user
names, user-IDs (prefixed with ‘#’),
system group names and IDs (prefixed with
‘%’ and
‘%#’ respectively), netgroups
(prefixed with ‘+’), non-Unix group
names and IDs (prefixed with ‘%:’ and
‘%:#’ respectively) and
User_Aliases. Each list item may be prefixed with
zero or more ‘!’ operators. An odd
number of ‘!’ operators negate the
value of the item; an even number just cancel each other out. User netgroups
are matched using the user and domain members only; the host member is not
used when matching.
A user name, uid,
group, gid,
netgroup, nonunix_group or
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., \x20 for space. When
using double quotes, any prefix characters must be included inside the
quotes.
The actual nonunix_group and
nonunix_gid syntax depends on the underlying group
provider plugin. For instance, the QAS AD plugin supports the following
formats:
See GROUP PROVIDER PLUGINS for more information.
Note that quotes around group names are optional. Unquoted strings
must use a backslash (‘\’) to escape
spaces and special characters. See
Other
special characters and reserved words for a list of characters that need
to be escaped.
Runas_List ::= Runas_Member |
Runas_Member ',' Runas_List
Runas_Member ::= '!'* user name |
'!'* #uid |
'!'* %group |
'!'* %#gid |
'!'* %:nonunix_group |
'!'* %:#nonunix_gid |
'!'* +netgroup |
'!'* Runas_Alias
A Runas_List is similar to a
User_List except that instead of
User_Aliases it can contain
Runas_Aliases. Note that user names and groups are
matched as strings. In other words, two users (groups) with the same user
(group) ID are considered to be distinct. If you wish to match all user
names with the same user-ID (e.g., root and toor), you can use a user-ID
instead of a name (#0 in the example given). Note that the user-ID or
group-ID specified in a Runas_Member need not be
listed in the password or group database.
Host_List ::= Host |
Host ',' Host_List
Host ::= '!'* host name |
'!'* ip_addr |
'!'* network(/netmask)? |
'!'* +netgroup |
'!'* Host_Alias
A Host_List is made up of one or more host
names, IP addresses, network numbers, netgroups (prefixed with
‘+’) and other aliases. Again, the
value of an item may be negated with the
‘!’ operator. Host netgroups are
matched using the host (both qualified and unqualified) and domain members
only; the user member is not used when matching. If you specify a network
number without a netmask, 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, will use the netmask of that
interface. 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 Wildcards section
below), but unless the host name command on your
machine returns the fully qualified host name, you'll need to use the
fqdn flag for wildcards to be useful. Note that
sudo only inspects actual network interfaces; this
means that IP address 127.0.0.1 (localhost) will never match. Also, the host
name “localhost” will only match if that is the actual host
name, which is usually only the case for non-networked systems.
digest ::= [A-Fa-f0-9]+ |
[A-Za-z0-9\+/=]+
Digest_Spec ::= "sha224" ':' digest |
"sha256" ':' digest |
"sha384" ':' digest |
"sha512" ':' digest
Digest_List ::= Digest_Spec |
Digest_Spec ',' Digest_List
Cmnd_List ::= Cmnd |
Cmnd ',' Cmnd_List
command name ::= file name |
file name args |
file name '""'
Edit_Spec ::= "sudoedit" file name+
Cmnd ::= Digest_List? '!'* command name |
'!'* directory |
'!'* Edit_Spec |
'!'* Cmnd_Alias
A 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
Wildcards section below). A simple file
name allows the user to run the command with any arguments they wish.
However, you may also specify command line arguments (including wildcards).
Alternately, you can specify "" to
indicate that the command may only be run without command
line arguments. A directory is a fully qualified path name ending in a
‘/’. When you specify a directory in a
Cmnd_List, the user will be able to run any file
within that directory (but not in any sub-directories therein).
If a Cmnd has associated command line
arguments, then the arguments in the 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
‘\’ if they are used in command
arguments: ‘,’,
‘:’,
‘=’,
‘\’. The built-in command
“sudoedit” is used to permit a user to
run sudo with the -e option
(or as sudoedit). It may take command line arguments
just as a normal command does. Note that
“sudoedit” is a command built into
sudo itself and must be specified in the
sudoers file without a leading path. If
a leading path is present, for example
/usr/bin/sudoedit, the path name will be silently
converted to “sudoedit”. A
fully-qualified path for sudoedit is treated as an
error by visudo.
A command name may be preceded by a
Digest_List, a comma-separated list of one or more
Digest_Spec entries. If a
Digest_List is present, the command will only match
successfully if it can be verified using one of the SHA-2 digests in the
list. Starting with version 1.9.0, the ALL reserved word
can be used in conjunction with a Digest_List. 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.
For example, using openssl:
$ openssl dgst -sha224 /bin/ls SHA224(/bin/ls)= 118187da8364d490b4a7debbf483004e8f3e053ec954309de2c41a25
It is also possible to use openssl to generate base64 output:
$ openssl dgst -binary -sha224 /bin/ls | openssl base64 EYGH2oNk1JC0p9679IMATo8+BT7JVDCd4sQaJQ==
Warning, if the user has write access to the command itself
(directly or via a sudo command), it may be possible
for the user to replace the command after the digest check has been
performed but before the command is executed. A similar race condition
exists on systems that lack the fexecve(2) system call
when the directory in which the command is located is writable by the user.
See the description of the fdexec setting for more
information on how sudo executes commands that have
an associated digest.
Command digests are only supported by version 1.8.7 or higher.
Certain configuration options may be changed from their default
values at run-time via one or more 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
Cmnd_Alias and reference that instead.
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
Parameters may be
flags,
integer
values,
strings,
or
lists.
Flags are implicitly boolean and can be turned off via the
‘!’ 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 ("") when they contain
multiple words. Special characters may be escaped with a backslash
(‘\’).
Lists have two additional assignment operators,
+= and -=. These operators
are used to add to and delete from a list respectively. It is not an error
to use the -= operator to remove an element that
does not exist in a list.
Defaults entries are parsed in the following order: generic, host, user and runas Defaults first, then command defaults. If there are multiple Defaults settings of the same type, the last matching setting is used. The following Defaults settings are parsed before all others since they may affect subsequent entries: fqdn, group_plugin, runas_default, sudoers_locale.
See SUDOERS OPTIONS for a list of supported Defaults parameters.
User_Spec ::= User_List Host_List '=' Cmnd_Spec_List \
(':' Host_List '=' Cmnd_Spec_List)*
Cmnd_Spec_List ::= Cmnd_Spec |
Cmnd_Spec ',' Cmnd_Spec_List
Cmnd_Spec ::= Runas_Spec? Option_Spec* Tag_Spec* Cmnd
Runas_Spec ::= '(' Runas_List? (':' Runas_List)? ')'
Option_Spec ::= (SELinux_Spec | Date_Spec | Timeout_Spec | Chdir_Spec | Chroot_Spec)
SELinux_Spec ::= ('ROLE=role' | 'TYPE=type')
Date_Spec ::= ('NOTBEFORE=timestamp' | 'NOTAFTER=timestamp')
Timeout_Spec ::= 'TIMEOUT=timeout'
Chdir_Spec ::= 'CWD=directory'
Chroot_Spec ::= 'CHROOT=directory'
Tag_Spec ::= ('EXEC:' | 'NOEXEC:' | 'FOLLOW:' | 'NOFOLLOW' |
'LOG_INPUT:' | 'NOLOG_INPUT:' | 'LOG_OUTPUT:' |
'NOLOG_OUTPUT:' | 'MAIL:' | 'NOMAIL:' | 'PASSWD:' |
'NOPASSWD:' | 'SETENV:' | 'NOSETENV:')
A user specification determines which commands a user may run (and as what user) on specified hosts. By default, commands are run as root, but this can be changed on a per-command basis.
The basic structure of a user specification is “who where = (as_whom) what”. Let's break that down into its constituent parts:
A Runas_Spec determines the user and/or
the group that a command may be run as. A fully-specified
Runas_Spec consists of two
Runas_Lists (as defined above) separated by a colon
(‘:’) and enclosed in a set of
parentheses. The first Runas_List indicates which
users the command may be run as via the -u option.
The second defines a list of groups that can be specified via the
-g option in addition to any of the target user's
groups. If both Runas_Lists are specified, the
command may be run with any combination of users and groups listed in their
respective Runas_Lists. If only the first is
specified, the command may be run as any user in the list but no
-g option may be specified. If the first
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 Runas_List. If both
Runas_Lists are empty, the command may only be run
as the invoking user. If no Runas_Spec is specified
the command may be run as root and no group may be
specified.
A Runas_Spec sets the default for the
commands that follow it. What this means is that for the entry:
dgb boulder = (operator) /bin/ls, /bin/kill, /usr/bin/lprm
The user dgb may run /bin/ls, /bin/kill, and /usr/bin/lprm on the host boulder—but only as operator. E.g.,
$ sudo -u operator /bin/ls
It is also possible to override a
Runas_Spec later on in an entry. If we modify the
entry like so:
dgb boulder = (operator) /bin/ls, (root) /bin/kill, /usr/bin/lprm
Then user dgb is now allowed to run /bin/ls as operator, but /bin/kill and /usr/bin/lprm as root.
We can extend this to allow dgb to run
/bin/ls with either the user or group set to
operator:
dgb boulder = (operator : operator) /bin/ls, (root) /bin/kill,\ /usr/bin/lprm
Note that while the group portion of the
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:
$ sudo -u operator /bin/ls $ sudo -u operator -g operator /bin/ls $ sudo -g operator /bin/ls
In the following example, user tcm may run commands that access a modem device file with the dialer group.
tcm boulder = (:dialer) /usr/bin/tip, /usr/bin/cu,\ /usr/local/bin/minicom
Note that in this example only the group will be set, the command still runs as user tcm. E.g.
$ sudo -g dialer /usr/bin/cu
Multiple users and groups may be present in a
Runas_Spec, in which case the user may select any
combination of users and groups via the -u and
-g options. In this example:
alan ALL = (root, bin : operator, system) ALL
user alan may run any command as either user root or bin, optionally setting the group to operator or system.
A Cmnd may have zero or more options
associated with it. Options may consist of SELinux roles and/or types, start
and/or end dates and command timeouts. Once an option is set for a
Cmnd, subsequent Cmnds in
the Cmnd_Spec_List, inherit that option unless it is
overridden by another option. Note that the option names are reserved words
in sudoers. This means that none of the valid option names
(see below) can be used when declaring an alias.
On systems with SELinux support, sudoers file 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 sudoers. A role or type specified on the command line, however, will supersede the values in sudoers.
sudoers rules can be specified with a
start and end date via the NOTBEFORE and
NOTAFTER settings. The time stamp must be specified
in
Generalized
Time as defined by RFC 4517. The format is effectively
yyyymmddHHMMSSZ where the minutes and seconds are
optional. The ‘Z’ suffix indicates
that the time stamp is in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). It is also
possible to specify a timezone offset from UTC in hours and minutes instead
of a ‘Z’. For example,
‘-0500’ would correspond to Eastern
Standard time in the US. As an extension, if no
‘Z’ or timezone offset is specified,
local time will be used.
The following are all valid time stamps:
20170214083000Z 2017021408Z 20160315220000-0500 20151201235900
A command may have a timeout associated with it. If the timeout
expires before the command has exited, the command will be terminated. The
timeout may be specified in combinations of days, hours, minutes and seconds
with a single-letter case-insensitive suffix that indicates the unit of
time. For example, a timeout of 7 days, 8 hours, 30 minutes and 10 seconds
would be written as 7d8h30m10s. If a number is
specified without a unit, seconds are assumed. Any of the days, minutes,
hours or seconds may be omitted. The order must be from largest to smallest
unit and a unit may not be specified more than once.
The following are all
valid timeout
values: 7d8h30m10s, 14d,
8h30m, 600s,
3600. The following are
invalid
timeout values: 12m2w1d,
30s10m4h, 1d2d3h.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.20 or higher.
The working directory that the command will be run in can be
specified using the CWD setting. The
directory must be a fully-qualified path name
beginning with a ‘/’ or ‘~’ character, or the
special value “*”. A value of “*” indicates that
the user may specify the working directory by running
sudo with the -D option. By
default, commands are run from the invoking user's current working
directory, unless the -i option is given. Path names
of the form ~user/path/name are interpreted as being
relative to the named user's home directory. If the user name is omitted,
the path will be relative to the runas user's home directory.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.3 or higher.
The root directory that the command will be run in can be
specified using the CHROOT setting. The
directory must be a fully-qualified path name
beginning with a ‘/’ or ‘~’ character, or the
special value “*”. A value of “*” indicates that
the user may specify the root directory by running
sudo with the -R option.
This setting can be used to run the command in a chroot(2)
“sandbox” similar to the chroot(8) utility.
Path names of the form ~user/path/name are
interpreted as being relative to the named user's home directory. If the
user name is omitted, the path will be relative to the runas user's home
directory.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.3 or higher.
A command may have zero or more tags associated with it. The
following tag values are supported: EXEC,
NOEXEC, FOLLOW,
NOFOLLOW, LOG_INPUT,
NOLOG_INPUT, LOG_OUTPUT,
NOLOG_OUTPUT, MAIL,
NOMAIL, PASSWD,
NOPASSWD, SETENV, and
NOSETENV. Once a tag is set on a
Cmnd, subsequent Cmnds in
the Cmnd_Spec_List, inherit the tag unless it is
overridden by the opposite tag (in other words,
PASSWD overrides NOPASSWD
and NOEXEC overrides
EXEC).
If sudo has been compiled with
noexec support and the underlying operating system
supports it, the NOEXEC tag can be used to
prevent a dynamically-linked executable from running further commands
itself.
In the following example, user aaron may run /usr/bin/more and /usr/bin/vi but shell escapes will be disabled.
aaron shanty = NOEXEC: /usr/bin/more, /usr/bin/vi
See the
Preventing shell
escapes section below for more details on how
NOEXEC works and whether or not it will work on
your system.
sudoedit will not
open a file that is a symbolic link unless the
sudoedit_follow flag is enabled. The
FOLLOW and NOFOLLOW tags override the
value of 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 sudoedit command and are ignored
for all other commands.These tags override the value of the log_input flag on a per-command basis. For more information, see the description of log_input in the SUDOERS OPTIONS section below.
These tags override the value of the log_output flag on a per-command basis. For more information, see the description of log_output in the SUDOERS OPTIONS section below.
These tags provide fine-grained control over whether mail will
be sent when a user runs a command by overriding the value of the
mail_all_cmnds flag on a per-command basis. They have
no effect when sudo is run with the
-l or -v options. A
NOMAIL tag will also override the
mail_always and mail_no_perms
options. For more information, see the descriptions of
mail_all_cmnds, mail_always, and
mail_no_perms in the
SUDOERS OPTIONS section
below.
By default, sudo requires that a user
authenticate him or herself before running a command. This behavior can
be modified via the NOPASSWD tag. Like a
Runas_Spec, the NOPASSWD
tag sets a default for the commands that follow it in the
Cmnd_Spec_List. Conversely, the
PASSWD tag can be used to reverse things. For
example:
ray rushmore = NOPASSWD: /bin/kill, /bin/ls, /usr/bin/lprm
would allow the user ray to run /bin/kill, /bin/ls, and /usr/bin/lprm as root on the machine rushmore without authenticating himself. If we only want ray to be able to run /bin/kill without a password the entry would be:
ray rushmore = NOPASSWD: /bin/kill, PASSWD: /bin/ls, /usr/bin/lprm
Note, however, that the PASSWD tag has
no effect on users who are in the group specified by the
exempt_group setting.
By default, if the
NOPASSWD tag is applied to any of a user's
entries for the current host, the user will be able to run
“sudo -l” without a password.
Additionally, a user may only run “sudo
-v” without a password if all of the user's entries for
the current host have the NOPASSWD tag. This
behavior may be overridden via the
verifypw and
listpw
options.
These tags override the value of the
setenv
flag on a per-command basis. Note that if SETENV
has been set for a command, the user may disable the
env_reset flag from the command line via the
-E option. Additionally, environment variables
set on the command line are not subject to the restrictions imposed by
env_check, env_delete, or
env_keep. As such, only trusted users should be
allowed to set variables in this manner. If the command matched is
ALL, the SETENV tag is implied
for that command; this default may be overridden by use of the
NOSETENV tag.
sudo allows shell-style
wildcards
(aka meta or glob characters) to be used in host names, path names and
command line arguments in the sudoers file. Wildcard
matching is done via the glob(3) and
fnmatch(3) functions as specified by IEEE
Std 1003.1 (“POSIX.1”).
*?[...][!...]\x*’,
‘?’,
‘[’, and
‘]’.Character classes may be used if your system's
glob(3) and fnmatch(3) functions support
them. However, because the ‘:’
character has special meaning in sudoers, it must be
escaped. For example:
/bin/ls [[\:alpha\:]]*
Would match any file name beginning with a letter.
Note that a forward slash
(‘/’) will not be
matched by wildcards used in the file name portion of the command. This is
to make a path like:
/usr/bin/*
match /usr/bin/who but not /usr/bin/X11/xterm.
When matching the command line arguments, however, a slash does get matched by wildcards since command line arguments may contain arbitrary strings and not just path names.
?’ or
‘*’ will match across word boundaries,
which may be unexpected. For example, while a sudoers entry like:
%operator ALL = /bin/cat /var/log/messages*
will allow command like:
$ sudo cat /var/log/messages.1
It will also allow:
$ sudo cat /var/log/messages /etc/shadow
which is probably not what was intended. In most cases it is better to do command line processing outside of the sudoers file in a scripting language.
The following exceptions apply to the above rules:
"""" is the only
command line argument in the sudoers file entry it means
that command is not allowed to be run with any
arguments./’) will not be matched by a
wildcard.It is possible to include other sudoers files
from within the sudoers file currently being parsed using
the @include and @includedir
directives. For compatibility with sudo versions prior to 1.9.1,
#include and #includedir are
also accepted.
An include file can be used, for example, to keep a site-wide sudoers file in addition to a local, per-machine file. For the sake of this example the site-wide sudoers file will be /etc/sudoers and the per-machine one will be /etc/sudoers.local. To include /etc/sudoers.local from within /etc/sudoers one would use the following line in /etc/sudoers:
@include /etc/sudoers.local
When sudo reaches this line it will
suspend processing of the current file
(/etc/sudoers) and switch to
/etc/sudoers.local. Upon reaching the end of
/etc/sudoers.local, the rest of
/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.
The path to the include file may contain white space if it is
escaped with a backslash (‘\’).
Alternately, the entire path may be enclosed in double quotes
(""), in which case no escaping is necessary. To include a literal
backslash in the path, ‘\\’ should be
used.
If the path to the include file is not fully-qualified (does not
begin with a ‘/’), it must be located
in the same directory as the sudoers file it was included from. For example,
if /etc/sudoers contains the line:
@include sudoers.localthe file that will be included is /etc/sudoers.local.
The file name may also include the %h
escape, signifying the short form of the host name. In other words, if the
machine's host name is “xerxes”, then
@include /etc/sudoers.%h
will cause sudo to include the file
/etc/sudoers.xerxes.
The @includedir directive can be used to
create a sudoers.d directory that the system package
manager can drop sudoers file rules into as part of
package installation. For example, given:
@includedir /etc/sudoers.d
sudo will suspend processing of
the current file and read each file in
/etc/sudoers.d, skipping file names that end in
‘~’ or contain a
‘.’ character to avoid causing
problems with package manager or editor temporary/backup files. Files are
parsed in sorted lexical order. That is,
/etc/sudoers.d/01_first will be parsed before
/etc/sudoers.d/10_second. Be aware that because the
sorting is lexical, not numeric,
/etc/sudoers.d/1_whoops would be loaded
after
/etc/sudoers.d/10_second. Using a consistent number
of leading zeroes in the file names can be used to avoid such problems.
After parsing the files in the directory, control returns to the file that
contained the @includedir directive.
Note that unlike files included via
@include, visudo will not
edit the files in a @includedir directory unless one
of them contains a syntax error. It is still possible to run
visudo with the -f flag to
edit the files directly, but this will not catch the redefinition of an
alias that is also present in a different file.
The pound sign (‘#’) 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 user-ID). Both the comment
character and any text after it, up to the end of the line, are ignored.
The reserved word ALL is a built-in
alias that always causes a match to succeed. It can be
used wherever one might otherwise use a Cmnd_Alias,
User_Alias, Runas_Alias, or
Host_Alias. Attempting to define an
alias named ALL will result in a syntax
error. Please note that using ALL can be dangerous since
in a command context, it allows the user to run any
command on the system.
The following option names permitted in an
Option_Spec are also considered reserved words:
CHROOT, ROLE,
TYPE, TIMEOUT,
CWD, NOTBEFORE and
NOTAFTER. Attempting to define an
alias with the same name as one of the options will result
in a syntax error.
An exclamation point (‘!’)
can be used as a logical not operator in a list or
alias as well as in front of a
Cmnd. This allows one to exclude certain values. For
the ‘!’ operator to be effective,
there must be something for it to exclude. For example, to match all users
except for root one would use:
ALL,!root
If the ALL, is omitted, as in:
!root
it would explicitly deny root but not match any other users. This is different from a true “negation” operator.
Note, however, that using a
‘!’ in conjunction with the built-in
ALL alias to allow a user to run “all but a
few” commands rarely works as intended (see
SECURITY NOTES below).
Long lines can be continued with a backslash
(‘\’) as the last character on the
line.
White space between elements in a list as well as special
syntactic characters in a User Specification
(‘=’,
‘:’,
‘(’,
‘)’) is optional.
The following characters must be escaped with a backslash
(‘\’) when used as part of a word
(e.g., a user name or host name): ‘!’,
‘=’,
‘:’,
‘,’,
‘(’,
‘)’,
‘\’.
sudo's behavior can be modified by
Default_Entry lines, as explained earlier. A list of
all supported Defaults parameters, grouped by type, are listed below.
sudo will set the
HOME environment variable to the home directory of
the target user (which is the root user unless the
-u option is used). This flag is largely obsolete
and has no effect unless the env_reset flag has been
disabled or HOME is present in the
env_keep list, both of which are strongly discouraged.
This flag is off by default.PASSWD and
NOPASSWD tags. This flag is on
by default.-C option which
overrides the default starting point at which sudo
begins closing open file descriptors. This flag is off
by default.sudo is configured to log a command's
input or output, the I/O logs will be compressed using
zlib. This flag is on by default when
sudo is compiled with zlib
support.sudo runs a command as the foreground
process as long as sudo itself is running in the
foreground. When the
exec_background
flag is enabled and the command is being run in a pseudo-terminal (due to
I/O logging or the 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 SIGTTIN signal (or
SIGTTOU in the case of terminal settings). If this
happens when 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 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 sudo behavior or when the command is not
being run in a pseudo-terminal.
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, macOS fails to restart the
tcgetattr()
and
tcsetattr()
system calls (this is a bug in macOS). Furthermore, because this
behavior depends on the command stopping with the
SIGTTIN or SIGTTOU
signals, programs that catch these signals and suspend themselves with a
different signal (usually SIGTOP) will not be
automatically foregrounded. Some versions of the linux
su(1) command behave this way. This flag is
off by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.7 or higher. It has no effect unless I/O logging is enabled or the use_pty flag is enabled.
visudo will use the value of the
SUDO_EDITOR, VISUAL or
EDITOR environment variables before falling back
on the default editor list. Note that visudo is
typically run as root so this flag may allow a user with
visudo privileges to run arbitrary commands as
root without logging. An alternative is to place a colon-separated list of
“safe” editors int the editor variable.
visudo will then only use
SUDO_EDITOR, VISUAL or
EDITOR if they match a value specified in
editor. If the env_reset flag is
enabled, the SUDO_EDITOR,
VISUAL and/or EDITOR
environment variables must be present in the env_keep
list for the
env_editor
flag to function when visudo is invoked via
sudo. This flag is on by
default.sudo will run the command in a minimal
environment containing the TERM,
PATH, HOME,
MAIL, SHELL,
LOGNAME, USER and
SUDO_* variables. Any variables in the caller's
environment or in the file specified by the
restricted_env_file setting that match the
env_keep and env_check
lists are then added, followed by any variables present in the file
specified by the env_file setting (if any). The contents
of the env_keep and
env_check lists, as modified by global Defaults
parameters in sudoers, are displayed when
sudo is run by root with the
-V option. If the secure_path
setting is enabled, its value will be used for the
PATH environment variable. This flag is
on by default.sudo uses the glob(3)
function to do shell-style globbing when matching path names. However,
since it accesses the file system, 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 fast_glob flag causes sudo
to use the fnmatch(3) function, which does not access
the file system to do its matching. The disadvantage of
fast_glob is that it is unable to match relative path
names such as ./ls or
../bin/ls. This has security implications when
path names that include globbing characters are used with the negation
operator, ‘!’, as such rules can be
trivially bypassed. As such, this flag should not be used when the
sudoers file contains rules that contain negated path
names which include globbing characters. This flag is
off by default.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
flag is only effective when the “canonical” host name, as
returned by the
getaddrinfo()
or
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.
If the system is configured to use the
/etc/hosts file in preference to DNS, the
“canonical” host name may not be fully-qualified. The
order that sources are queried for host name resolution is usually
specified in the /etc/nsswitch.conf,
/etc/netsvc.conf,
/etc/host.conf, or, in some cases,
/etc/resolv.conf file. In the
/etc/hosts file, the first host name of the
entry is considered to be the “canonical” name; subsequent
names are aliases that are not used by sudoers.
For example, the following hosts file line for the machine
“xyzzy” has the fully-qualified domain name as the
“canonical” host name, and the short version as an
alias.
192.168.1.1 xyzzy.sudo.ws
xyzzyIf the machine's hosts file entry is not formatted properly, the fqdn flag will not be effective if it is queried before DNS.
Beware that when using DNS for host name resolution, turning
on fqdn requires sudoers to
make DNS lookups which renders 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
“canonical” name as DNS knows it. That is, you may not use
a host alias (CNAME entry) due to performance
issues and the fact that there is no way to get all aliases from
DNS.
This flag is on by default.
sudoers cannot
write to the audit log. If enabled, an audit log write failure is not
treated as a fatal error. If disabled, a command may only be run after the
audit event is successfully written. This flag is only effective on
systems for which sudoers supports audit logging,
including FreeBSD, Linux, macOS and Solaris. This
flag is on by default.sudo will ignore "." or
"" (both denoting current directory) in the
PATH environment variable; the
PATH itself is not modified. This flag is
off by default.sudoers cannot
write to the I/O log (local or remote). If enabled, an I/O log write
failure is not treated as a fatal error. If disabled, the command will be
terminated if the I/O log cannot be written to. This flag is
off by default.sudoers cannot
write to the log file. If enabled, a log file write failure is not treated
as a fatal error. If disabled, a command may only be run after the log
file entry is successfully written. This flag only has an effect when
sudoers is configured to use file-based logging
via the logfile setting. This flag is
on by default.sudo how to behave when no
specific LDAP entries have been matched, this sudoOption is only
meaningful for the cn=defaults section. This flag
is off by default.sudo will not produce a warning if it
encounters an unknown Defaults entry in the sudoers file
or an unknown sudoOption in LDAP. This flag is off by
default.sudo will insult users when they enter an
incorrect password. This flag is off by default.sudoers will log commands allowed by the
policy to the system audit log (where supported) as well as to syslog
and/or a log file. This flag is on by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.29 or higher.
sudoers will log commands denied by the
policy to the system audit log (where supported) as well as to syslog
and/or a log file. This flag is on by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.29 or higher.
sudo will run the command in a
pseudo-terminal 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. Anything sent to the standard input will be consumed,
regardless of whether or not the command run via
sudo is actually reading the standard input. This
may have unexpected results when using sudo in a
shell script that expects to process the standard input. For more
information about I/O logging, see the
I/O LOG FILES section. This flag
is off by default.sudo will run the command in a
pseudo-terminal and log all output that is sent to the screen, similar to
the script(1) command. For more information about I/O
logging, see the I/O LOG FILES
section. This flag is off by default.sudo will enable the TCP keepalive socket
option on the connection to the log server. This enables the periodic
transmission of keepalive messages to the server. If the server does not
respond to a message, the connection will be closed and the running
command will be terminated unless the
ignore_iolog_errors flag (I/O logging enabled) or the
ignore_log_errors flag (I/O logging disabled) is set.
This flag is on by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.0 or higher.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.0 or higher.
sudo log file. This flag is off
by default.sudo (this includes
sudoedit). No mail will be sent if the user runs
sudo with the -l or
-v option unless there is an authentication error
and the mail_badpass flag is also set. This flag is
off by default.sudo. This flag is off by
default.sudo does not enter the correct password. If the
command the user is attempting to run is not permitted by
sudoers and one of the
mail_all_cmnds, mail_always,
mail_no_host,
mail_no_perms or
mail_no_user
flags are set, this flag will have no effect. This flag is
off by default.sudo but the
command they are trying is not listed in their sudoers
file entry or is explicitly denied. This flag is off by
default.sudoers will look up each group the
user is a member of by group-ID to determine the group name (this is only
done once). The resulting list of the user's group names is used when
matching groups listed in the sudoers file. This works
well on systems where the number of groups listed in the
sudoers file is larger than the number of groups a
typical user belongs to. On systems where group lookups are slow, where
users may belong to a large number of groups, and where the number of
groups listed in the sudoers file is relatively small,
it may be prohibitively expensive and running commands via
sudo may take longer than normal. On such systems
it may be faster to use the match_group_by_gid flag to
avoid resolving the user's group-IDs to group names. In this case,
sudoers must look up any group name listed in the
sudoers file and use the group-ID instead of the group
name when determining whether the user is a member of the group.
Note that if match_group_by_gid is enabled,
group database lookups performed by sudoers will
be keyed by group name as opposed to group-ID. On systems where there
are multiple sources for the group database, it is possible to have
conflicting group names or group-IDs in the local
/etc/group file and the remote group database.
On such systems, enabling or disabling
match_group_by_gid can be used to choose whether group
database queries are performed by name (enabled) or ID (disabled), which
may aid in working around group entry conflicts.
The match_group_by_gid flag has no effect when sudoers data is stored in LDAP. This flag is off by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.18 or higher.
sudo only matched the user name and domain for
netgroups used in a User_List and only matched the
host name and domain for netgroups used in a
Host_List. This flag is off by
default.sudo will behave as
if the NOEXEC tag has been set, unless overridden
by an EXEC tag. See the description of
EXEC and NOEXEC above as well as the
Preventing shell
escapes section at the end of this manual. This flag is
off by default.sudo
will perform PAM account validation for the invoking user by default. The
actual checks performed depend on which PAM modules are configured. If
enabled, account validation will be performed regardless of whether or not
a password is required. This flag is on by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.28 or higher.
sudo
will set the PAM remote host value to the name of the local host when the
pam_rhost flag is enabled. On Linux systems, enabling
pam_rhost may result in DNS lookups of the local host
name when PAM is initialized. On Solaris versions prior to Solaris 8,
pam_rhost must be enabled if pam_ruser
is also enabled to avoid a crash in the Solaris PAM implementation.
This flag is off by default on systems other than Solaris.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.0 or higher.
sudo
will set the PAM remote user value to the name of the user that invoked
sudo when the pam_ruser flag is enabled. This flag is
on by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.0 or higher.
sudo
will create a new PAM session for the command to be run in. Unless
sudo is given the -i or
-s options, PAM session modules are run with the
“silent” flag enabled. This prevents last login information
from being displayed for every command on some systems. Disabling
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 pam_session,
pam_setcred, and use_pty are disabled,
log_servers has not been set and I/O logging has not
been configured, sudo will execute the command
directly instead of running it as a child process. This flag is
on by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.7 or higher.
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 pam_session,
pam_setcred, and use_pty are disabled,
log_servers has not been set and I/O logging has not
been configured, sudo will execute the command
directly instead of running it as a child process. This flag is
on by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.8 or higher.
SUDO_PROMPT environment variable will always be
used and will replace the prompt provided by a PAM module or other
authentication method. This flag is off by default.sudo will tell the user when a command
could not be found in their 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 PATH,
sudo will tell the user that they are not allowed
to run it, which can be confusing. This flag is on by
default.sudo will initialize the group vector
to the list of groups the target user is in. When
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 off by default.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 sudo has hung at this point. When
pwfeedback
is set, 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 off by default.sudo will only run when the user is logged
in to a real tty. When this flag is set, sudo can
only be run from a login session and not via other means such as
cron(8) or cgi-bin scripts. This flag is
off by default.sudo too. Disabling
this prevents users from “chaining”
sudo commands to get a root shell by doing
something like “sudo sudo /bin/sh”.
Note, however, that turning off root_sudo will also
prevent root from running sudoedit. Disabling
root_sudo provides no real additional security; it
exists purely for historical reasons. This flag is on by
default.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 off by default.Runas_List, this option also allows the
ALL alias to match unknown IDs. This flag is
off by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.30 or higher.
Older versions of sudo always allowed matching
of unknown user and group IDs.
sudo will only run commands as a user
whose shell appears in the /etc/shells file, even
if the invoking user's Runas_List would otherwise
permit it. If no /etc/shells file is present, a
system-dependent list of built-in default shells is used. On many
operating systems, system users such as “bin”, do not have a
valid shell and this flag can be used to prevent commands from being run
as those users. This flag is off by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.30 or higher.
sudo will prompt for the password of the
user defined by the runas_default option (defaults to
root) instead of the password of the invoking user
when running a command or editing a file. This flag is
off by default.sudo is invoked with the
-s option, the HOME
environment variable will be set to the home directory of the target user
(which is the root user unless the -u option is
used). This flag is largely obsolete and has no effect unless the
env_reset flag has been disabled or
HOME is present in the env_keep
list, both of which are strongly discouraged. This flag is
off by default.sudo will set the
LOGNAME and USER
environment variables to the name of the target user (usually root unless
the -u option is given). However, since some
programs (including the RCS revision control system) use
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 set_logname
will have no effect if the env_reset option has not been
disabled and the env_keep list contains
LOGNAME or USER. This flag
is on by default.sudo will create an entry in the
utmp (or utmpx) file when a pseudo-terminal is allocated. A
pseudo-terminal is allocated by sudo when it is
running in a terminal and one or more of the log_input,
log_output or use_pty flags is
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 on by default.-E option. Additionally,
environment variables set via the command line are not subject to the
restrictions imposed by env_check,
env_delete, or env_keep. As such, only
trusted users should be allowed to set variables in this manner. This flag
is off by default.sudo is invoked with no arguments it
acts as if the -s option had been given. That is,
it runs a shell as root (the shell is determined by the
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 off by default.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
sudo act as a set-user-ID wrapper. This can be
useful on systems that disable some potentially dangerous functionality
when a program is run set-user-ID. This option is only effective on
systems that support either the setreuid(2) or
setresuid(2) system call. This flag is
off by default.sudoedit will check all directory
components of the path to be edited for writability by the invoking user.
Symbolic links will not be followed in writable directories and
sudoedit will refuse to edit a file located in a
writable directory. These restrictions are not enforced when
sudoedit is run by root. On some systems, if all
directory components of the path to be edited are not readable by the
target user, sudoedit will be unable to edit the
file. This flag is on by default.
This setting was first introduced in version 1.8.15 but initially suffered from a race condition. The check for symbolic links in writable intermediate directories was added in version 1.8.16.
sudoedit will not follow symbolic
links when opening files. The sudoedit_follow option can
be enabled to allow sudoedit to open symbolic
links. It may be overridden on a per-command basis by the
FOLLOW and NOFOLLOW tags. This flag is
off by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.15 or higher.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.21 or higher.
sudo will prompt for the password of the
user specified by the -u option (defaults to
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 user-ID not listed in the passwd database as an argument to
the -u option. This flag is off
by default.sudo will use a separate record in the
time stamp file for each terminal. If disabled, a single record is used
for all login sessions.
This option has been superseded by the timestamp_type option.
sudo will set the umask as specified in
the sudoers file without modification. This makes it
possible to specify a umask in the sudoers file that is
more permissive than the user's own umask and matches historical behavior.
If umask_override is not set,
sudo will set the umask to be the union of the
user's umask and what is specified in sudoers. This flag
is off by default.+’), may be used in place of a user
or host. For LDAP-based sudoers, netgroup support requires an expensive
sub-string match on the server unless the
NETGROUP_BASE
directive is present in the /etc/ldap.conf file.
If netgroups are not needed, this option can be disabled to reduce the
load on the LDAP server. This flag is on by
default.sudo is running in a terminal, the
command will be run in a pseudo-terminal (even if no I/O logging is being
done). If the sudo process is not attached to a
terminal, use_pty has no effect.
A malicious program run under sudo may
be capable of injecting commands into the user's terminal or running a
background process that retains access to the user's terminal device
even after the main program has finished executing. By running the
command in a separate pseudo-terminal, this attack is no longer
possible. This flag is off by default.
Timeout_Spec section for a description of the
timeout syntax. This flag is off by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.20 or higher.
sudo will store the name of the runas user
when updating the utmp (or utmpx) file. By default,
sudo stores the name of the invoking user. This
flag is off by default.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
visiblepw
flag is set, sudo will prompt for a password even
when it would be visible on the screen. This makes it possible to run
things like “ssh somehost sudo ls”
since by default, ssh(1) does not allocate a tty when
running a command. This flag is off by default.Integers:
sudo will close all
open file descriptors other than standard input, standard output and
standard error (ie: file descriptors 0-2). The
closefrom
option can be used to specify a different file descriptor at which to
start closing. The default is 3.Timeout_Spec section for a
description of the timeout syntax.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.20 or higher.
Timeout_Spec section for a description of the
timeout syntax. The default value is 30 seconds.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.0 or higher.
%{seq}” escape in the I/O log file
(see the iolog_dir description below for more
information). While the value substituted for
“%{seq}” is in base 36,
maxseq itself should be expressed in decimal. Values
larger than 2176782336 (which corresponds to the base 36 sequence number
“ZZZZZZ”) will be silently truncated to 2176782336. The
default value is 2176782336.
Once the local sequence number reaches the value of
maxseq, it will “roll over” to zero,
after which sudoers will truncate and re-use any
existing I/O log path names.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.7 or higher.
sudo logs the failure and exits. The default is
3.sudoers creates log messages up to 980
bytes which corresponds to the historic BSD syslog
implementation which used a 1024 byte buffer to store the message, date,
hostname and program name. To prevent syslog messages from being
truncated, sudoers will split up log messages that
are larger than syslog_maxlen bytes. When a message is
split, additional parts will include the string “(command
continued)” after the user name and before the continued command
line arguments.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.19 or higher.
Integers that can be used in a boolean context:
80 (use 0 or negate the option to disable word
wrap).sudo password prompt
times out, or 0 for no timeout. The timeout may
include a fractional component if minute granularity is insufficient, for
example 2.5. The default is
0.sudo will
ask for a passwd again. The timeout may include a fractional component if
minute granularity is insufficient, for example
2.5. The default is 15.
Set this to 0 to always prompt for a password. If
set to a value less than 0 the user's time stamp
will not expire until the system is rebooted. This can be used to allow
users to create or delete their own time stamps via
“sudo -v” and
“sudo -k” respectively.sudoers from
changing the umask. Unless the umask_override flag is
set, the actual umask will be the union of the user's umask and the value
of the umask setting, which defaults to
0022. This guarantees that
sudo never lowers the umask when running a
command.
If umask is explicitly set in
sudoers, it will override any umask setting in PAM or
login.conf. If umask is not set in
sudoers, the umask specified by PAM or login.conf will
take precedence. The umask setting in PAM is not used for
sudoedit, which does not create a new PAM
session.
Strings:
%d’ escape which
will expand to the number of failed password attempts. If set, it
overrides the default message, %d incorrect password
attempt(s).Sorry, try again. unless insults are
enabled.:’) separated list of
editors path names used by sudoedit and
visudo. For sudoedit, this
list is used to find an editor when none of the
SUDO_EDITOR, VISUAL or
EDITOR environment variables are set to an editor
that exists and is executable. For visudo, it is
used as a white list of allowed editors; visudo
will choose the editor that matches the user's
SUDO_EDITOR, VISUAL or
EDITOR environment variable if possible, or the
first editor in the list that exists and is executable if not. Unless
invoked as sudoedit, sudo
does not preserve the SUDO_EDITOR,
VISUAL or EDITOR
environment variables unless they are present in the
env_keep list or the env_reset option
is disabled. The default is /usr/bin/editor.LOG_INPUT or LOG_OUTPUT
tags are present for a command. The session sequence number, if any, is
stored in the directory. The default is
/var/log/sudo-io.
The following percent
(‘%’) escape sequences are
supported:
%{seq}%{user}%{group}%{runas_user}%{runas_group}%{hostname}%{command}In addition, any escape sequences supported by the system's strftime(3) function will be expanded.
To include a literal ‘%’
character, the string ‘%%’ should
be used.
LOG_INPUT or LOG_OUTPUT
tags are present for a command. Note that iolog_file may
contain directory components. The default is
“%{seq}”.
See the iolog_dir option above for a list of
supported percent (‘%’) escape
sequences.
In addition to the escape sequences, path names that end in
six or more Xs will have the
Xs replaced with a unique combination of digits
and letters, similar to the mktemp(3) function.
If the path created by concatenating
iolog_dir and iolog_file already
exists, the existing I/O log file will be truncated and overwritten
unless iolog_file ends in six or more
Xs.
sudo will flush I/O log data to disk after
each write instead of buffering it. This makes it possible to view the
logs in real-time as the program is executing but may significantly reduce
the effectiveness of I/O log compression. This flag is
off by default.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.20 or higher.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.19 or higher.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.19 or higher.
This setting can be useful when the I/O logs are stored on a
Network File System (NFS) share. Having a dedicated user own the I/O log
files means that sudoers does not write to the
log files as user-ID 0, which is usually not permitted by NFS.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.19 or higher.
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 sudo
will not lecture the user again. This directory should
not be cleared when the system reboots. The default is
/var/lib/sudo/lectured.This setting is only supported by version 1.9.0 or higher.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.0 or higher.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.0 or higher.
%h will expand to the host name of the machine.
Default is “*** SECURITY information for %h
***”.sudo version 1.8.1 this option is no longer
supported. The path to the noexec file should now be set in the
sudo.conf(5) file.-i option is specified. The default value
is “sudo”. See the description of
pam_service
for more information.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.8 or higher.
sudo”.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.8 or higher.
-p option or the
SUDO_PROMPT environment variable. The following
percent (‘%’) escape sequences are
supported:
%H%h%p%U%u%%% characters are collapsed
into a single % characterOn systems that use PAM for authentication, passprompt will only be used if the prompt provided by the PAM module matches the string “Password: ” or “username's Password: ”. This ensures that the passprompt setting does not interfere with challenge-response style authentication. The passprompt_override flag can be used to change this behavior.
The default value is “[sudo] password
for %p: ”.
sudo is built
with SELinux support.-u
option is not specified on the command line. This defaults to
root.C”.sudoers uses per-user time stamp files for
credential caching. The timestamp_type option can be
used to specify the type of time stamp record used. It has the following
possible values:
sudo is used multiple times in a pipeline, but
this does not affect authentication.15 by default). Commands run via
sudo with a different parent process ID, for
example from a shell script, will be authenticated separately.15 by default).The default value is tty.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.21 or higher.
sudo stores its time stamp
files. This directory should be cleared when the system reboots. The
default is /run/sudo/ts.root.sudo is built
with SELinux support.Strings that can be used in a boolean context:
VARIABLE=value” or
“export VARIABLE=value”. The value
may optionally be enclosed in single or double quotes. Variables in this
file are only added if the variable does not already exist in the
environment. This file is considered to be part of the security policy,
its contents are not subject to other sudo
environment restrictions such as env_keep and
env_check.%
prefix. This is not set by default.sudo will execute a command by
its path or by an open file descriptor. It has the following possible
values:
The default value is digest_only. This avoids a time of check versus time of use race condition when the command is located in a directory writable by the invoking user.
Note that fdexec will change the first
element of the argument vector for scripts ($0 in the shell) due to the
way the kernel runs script interpreters. Instead of being a normal path,
it will refer to a file descriptor. For example,
/dev/fd/4 on Solaris and
/proc/self/fd/4 on Linux. A workaround is to use
the SUDO_COMMAND environment variable
instead.
The fdexec setting is only used when the command is matched by path name. It has no effect if the command is matched by the built-in ALL alias.
This setting is only supported by version 1.8.20 or higher. If the operating system does not support the fexecve(2) system call, this setting has no effect.
sudoers group plugin with
optional arguments. The string should consist of the plugin path, either
fully-qualified or relative to the /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 ("").
For more information see GROUP PROVIDER PLUGINS.
sudo.If no value is specified, a value of once is implied. Negating the option results in a value of never being used. The default value is once.
sudo
lecture that will be used in place of the standard lecture if the named
file exists. By default, sudo uses a built-in
lecture.sudo with the -l option.
It has the following possible values:
NOPASSWD flag set to avoid
entering a password.-l option.NOPASSWD flag
set to avoid entering a password.-l option.If no value is specified, a value of any is implied. Negating the option results in a value of never being used. The default value is any.
This setting affects logs sent via syslog(3) as well as the file specified by the logfile setting, if any. The default value is sudo.
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, sudo logs via
syslog.-t.sudo
interpreting the @ sign. Defaults to the name of
the user running sudo.sudo interpreting the @
sign. Defaults to root.VARIABLE=value” or
“export VARIABLE=value”. The value
may optionally be enclosed in single or double quotes. Variables in this
file are only added if the variable does not already exist in the
environment. Unlike env_file, the file's contents are
not trusted and are processed in a manner similar to that of the invoking
user's environment. If env_reset is enabled, variables
in the file will only be added if they are matched by either the
env_check or env_keep list. If
env_reset is disabled, variables in the file are added
as long as they are not matched by the env_delete list.
In either case, the contents of restricted_env_file are
processed before the contents of env_file.sudo will use this value for the root
directory when running a command. The special value “*” will
allow the user to specify the root directory via
sudo's -R option. See the
Chroot_Spec section for more
details.
It is only possible to use runchroot as a command-specific Defaults setting if the command exists with the same path both inside and outside the chroot jail. This restriction does not apply to generic, host or user-based Defaults settings or to a Cmnd_Spec that includes a Chroot_Spec.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.3 or higher.
sudo will use this value for the working
directory when running a command. The special value “*” will
allow the user to specify the working directory via
sudo's -D option. See the
Chdir_Spec section for more details.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.3 or higher.
sudo will use this value in place of the
user's PATH environment variable. This option can
be used to reset the PATH to a known good value
that contains directories for system administrator commands such as
/usr/sbin.
Users in the group specified by the exempt_group option are not affected by secure_path. This option is not set by default.
authpriv.
The following syslog facilities are supported: authpriv (if your OS supports it), auth, daemon, user, local0, local1, local2, local3, local4, local5, local6, and local7.
alert.
The following syslog priorities are supported: alert, crit, debug, emerg, err, info, notice, warning, and none. Negating the option or setting it to a value of none will disable logging of unsuccessful commands.
notice.
See syslog_badpri for the list of supported syslog priorities. Negating the option or setting it to a value of none will disable logging of successful commands.
sudo with the -v option.
It has the following possible values:
NOPASSWD flag set to avoid
entering a password.-v option.NOPASSWD flag
set to avoid entering a password.-v option.If no value is specified, a value of all is implied. Negating the option results in a value of never being used. The default value is all.
Lists that can be used in a boolean context:
TZ, “safe” means that the variable's
value does not contain any ‘%’ or
‘/’ characters. This can be used to
guard against printf-style format vulnerabilities in poorly-written
programs. The TZ variable is considered unsafe if
any of the following are true:
:’), that does not match
the location of the zoneinfo directory.PATH_MAX.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 =,
+=, -=, and
! operators respectively. Regardless of whether
the env_reset option is enabled or disabled,
variables specified by env_check will be
preserved in the environment if they pass the aforementioned check. The
global list of environment variables to check is displayed when
sudo is run by root with the
-V option.
=,
+=, -=, and
! operators respectively. The global list of
environment variables to remove is displayed when
sudo is run by root with the
-V option. Note that many operating systems will
remove potentially dangerous variables from the environment of any
set-user-ID process (such as sudo).sudo-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
=, +=,
-=, and ! operators
respectively. The global list of variables to keep is displayed when
sudo is run by root with the
-V option.
Preserving the HOME environment
variable has security implications since many programs use it when
searching for configuration or data files. Adding
HOME to env_keep may enable a
user to run unrestricted commands via sudo and
is strongly discouraged. Users wishing to edit files with
sudo should run sudoedit
(or sudo -e) to get
their accustomed editor configuration instead of invoking the editor
directly.
sudo_logsrvd or another service that implements
the protocol described by sudo_logsrv.proto(5).
Server addresses should be of the form “host[:port][(tls)]”. The host portion may be a host name, an IPv4 address, or an IPv6 address in square brackets.
If the optional tls flag is present, the connection will be secured with Transport Layer Security (TLS) version 1.2 or 1.3. Versions of TLS prior to 1.2 are not supported.
If a port is specified, it may either be a port number or a well-known service name as defined by the system service name database. If no port is specified, port 30343 will be used for plaintext connections and port 30344 will be used for TLS connections.
When log_servers is set, event
log data will be logged both locally (see the syslog
and log_file
settings) as well as remotely, but I/O log data will only be logged
remotely. If multiple hosts are specified, they will be attempted in
reverse order. If no log servers are available, the user will not be
able to run a command unless either the
ignore_iolog_errors flag (I/O logging enabled) or the
ignore_log_errors flag (I/O logging disabled) is set.
Likewise, if the connection to the log server is interrupted while
sudo is running, the command will be terminated
unless the ignore_iolog_errors flag (I/O logging
enabled) or the ignore_log_errors flag (I/O logging
disabled) is set.
This setting is only supported by version 1.9.0 or higher.
The 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 nonunix_group syntax described
earlier.
Group provider plugins are specified via the group_plugin setting. The argument to group_plugin should consist of the plugin path, either fully-qualified or relative to the /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 ("").
The following group provider plugins are installed by default:
Defaults group_plugin="group_file.so /etc/sudo-group"
getgrnam()
and
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:
Defaults group_plugin=system_group.so
The group provider plugin API is described in detail in sudo_plugin(5).
sudoers can log events in either JSON or
sudo format, this section describes the
sudo log format. Depending on sudoers
configuration, sudoers can log events via
syslog(3), to a local log file, or both. The log format is
almost identical in both cases.
Commands that sudo runs are logged using the following format (split into multiple lines for readability):
date hostname progname: username : TTY=ttyname ; PWD=cwd ; \
USER=runasuser ; GROUP=runasgroup ; TSID=logid ; \
ENV=env_vars COMMAND=command
Where the fields are as follows:
sudo was run on. This field
is only present when logging via syslog(3).sudo.sudo was run on, or “unknown” if
there was no terminal present.sudo was run
in.Messages are logged using the locale specified by
sudoers_locale, which defaults to the
“C” locale.
If the user is not allowed to run the command, the reason for the denial will follow the user name. Possible reasons include:
-n option was specified but a password was
required.If an error occurs, sudoers will log a
message and, in most cases, send a message to the administrator via email.
Possible errors include:
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.sudo from running,
but the sudoers file should be checked using
visudo.sudoers tries to open the
sudoers file using group permissions to avoid this
problem. Consider either changing the ownership of
/etc/sudoers or adding an argument like
“sudoers_uid=N” (where ‘N’ is the user-ID that
owns the sudoers file) to the end of the
sudoers Plugin line in the
sudo.conf(5) file.sudoers Plugin line in the
sudo.conf(5) file.sudoers
Plugin line in the sudo.conf(5)
file.sudoers Plugin line in the
sudo.conf(5) file.sudoers was unable to read or create the user's
time stamp file. This can happen when timestampowner is
set to a user other than root and the mode on
/run/sudo is not searchable by group or other. The
default mode for /run/sudo is 0711.sudoers was unable to write to the user's time
stamp file.sudoers will ignore the time stamp directory until
the owner is corrected.sudoers will ignore the time
stamp directory until the mode is corrected.By default, sudoers logs messages via
syslog(3). The
date,
hostname, and progname fields are added
by the system's
syslog()
function, not sudoers itself. As such, they may vary
in format on different systems.
The maximum size of syslog messages varies from system to system. The syslog_maxlen setting can be used to change the maximum syslog message size from the default value of 980 bytes. For more information, see the description of syslog_maxlen.
If the logfile option is set,
sudoers will log to a local file, such as
/var/log/sudo. When logging to a file,
sudoers uses a format similar to
syslog(3), with a few important differences:
!’), word wrap will be
disabled.When I/O logging is enabled, sudo will run
the command in a pseudo-terminal and log all user input and/or output,
depending on which options are enabled. I/O can be logged either to the
local machine or to a remote log server. For local logs, I/O is logged to
the directory specified by the iolog_dir option
(/var/log/sudo-io by default) using a unique session
ID that is included in the sudo log line, prefixed
with “TSID=”. The
iolog_file option may be used to control the format of the
session ID. For remote logs, the log_servers setting is
used to specify one or more log servers running
sudo_logsrvd or another server that implements the
protocol described by sudo_logsrv.proto(5).
For both local and remote I/O logs, each log is stored in a separate directory that contains the following files:
sudo, the name
of the target user, the name of the target group (optional), the terminal
that sudo was run from, and the number of lines
and columns of the terminal. The second and third lines contain the
working directory the command was run from and the path name of the
command itself (with arguments if present).sudo
was run.sudo.sudo from. If the command was run in a
pseudo-terminal,
ttyname
will be different from the terminal the command actually ran in.sudo 1.8.7 terminal
outputgunzip -c ttyin | tr "\r"
"\n"’All files other than log
are compressed in gzip format unless the
compress_io
flag has been disabled. Due to buffering, it is not normally possible to
display the I/O logs in real-time as the program is executing. The I/O log
data will not be complete until the program run by
sudo has exited or has been terminated by a signal.
The
iolog_flush
flag can be used to disable buffering, in which case I/O log data is written
to disk as soon as it is available. The output portion of an I/O log file
can be viewed with the sudoreplay(8) utility, which can
also be used to list or search the available logs.
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
log_output or LOG_OUTPUT is all
that is required.
Since each session's I/O logs are stored in a separate directory,
traditional log rotation utilities cannot be used to limit the number of I/O
logs. The simplest way to limit the number of I/O is by setting the
maxseq option to the maximum number of logs you wish to
store. Once the I/O log sequence number reaches maxseq, it
will be reset to zero and sudoers will truncate and
re-use any existing I/O logs.
sudoers
security policysudoers security policy-i mode on AIX and Linux
systemsBelow are example sudoers file entries. Admittedly, some of these are a bit contrived. First, we allow a few environment variables to pass and then define our aliases:
# 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 WEBADMIN = 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 :\ SGI = grolsch, dandelion, black :\ ALPHA = widget, thalamus, foobar :\ 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 = primary, mail, www, ns Host_Alias CDROM = orion, perseus, hercules # Cmnd alias specification Cmnd_Alias DUMPS = /usr/bin/mt, /usr/sbin/dump, /usr/sbin/rdump,\ /usr/sbin/restore, /usr/sbin/rrestore,\ sha224:0GomF8mNN3wlDt1HD9XldjJ3SNgpFdbjO1+NsQ== \ /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,\ /usr/local/bin/tcsh, /usr/bin/rsh,\ /usr/local/bin/zsh Cmnd_Alias SU = /usr/bin/su Cmnd_Alias PAGERS = /usr/bin/more, /usr/bin/pg, /usr/bin/less
Here we override some of the compiled in default values. We want
sudo to log via syslog(3) using
the auth facility in all cases and for commands to be run
with the target user's home directory as the working directory. We don't
want to subject the full time staff to the sudo
lecture and we want to allow them to run commands in a
chroot(2) “sandbox” via the
-R option. User millert need not
provide a password and we don't want to reset the
LOGNAME or USER environment
variables when running commands as root. Additionally, on the machines in
the SERVERS 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
Cmnd_Alias (/usr/bin/more,
/usr/bin/pg and
/usr/bin/less). Note that this will not effectively
constrain users with sudo ALL
privileges.
# Override built-in defaults Defaults syslog=auth,runcwd=~ Defaults>root !set_logname Defaults:FULLTIMERS !lecture,runchroot=* Defaults:millert !authenticate Defaults@SERVERS log_year, logfile=/var/log/sudo.log Defaults!PAGERS noexec
The User specification is the part that actually determines who may run what.
root ALL = (ALL) ALL %wheel ALL = (ALL) ALL
We let root and any user in group wheel run any command on any host as any user.
FULLTIMERS ALL = NOPASSWD: ALL
Full time sysadmins (millert, mikef, and dowdy) may run any command on any host without authenticating themselves.
PARTTIMERS ALL = ALL
Part time sysadmins
bostley,
jwfox,
and
crawl)
may run any command on any host but they must authenticate themselves first
(since the entry lacks the NOPASSWD tag).
jack CSNETS = ALL
The user
jack may run any
command on the machines in the CSNETS alias (the networks
128.138.243.0,
128.138.204.0, and
128.138.242.0). Of those networks, only
128.138.204.0 has an explicit netmask (in CIDR
notation) indicating it is a class C network. For the other networks in
CSNETS, the local machine's netmask will be used during
matching.
lisa CUNETS = ALL
The user
lisa may run any
command on any host in the
CUNETS
alias (the class B network 128.138.0.0).
operator ALL = DUMPS, KILL, SHUTDOWN, HALT, REBOOT, PRINTING,\ sudoedit /etc/printcap, /usr/oper/bin/
The 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 /usr/oper/bin/. Note that one
command in the DUMPS Cmnd_Alias includes a sha224
digest, /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 sudo.
joe ALL = /usr/bin/su operator
The user joe may only su(1) to operator.
pete HPPA = /usr/bin/passwd [A-Za-z]*, !/usr/bin/passwd *root* %opers ALL = (: ADMINGRP) /usr/sbin/
Users in the
opers group may run
commands in /usr/sbin/ as themselves with any group
in the
ADMINGRP
Runas_Alias (the
adm and
oper
groups).
The user
pete is allowed to
change anyone's password except for root on the
HPPA
machines. Because command line arguments are matched as a single,
concatenated string, the ‘*’ wildcard
will match
multiple
words. This example assumes that passwd(1) does not take
multiple user names on the command line. Note that on GNU systems, options
to passwd(1) may be specified after the user argument. As
a result, this rule will also allow:
passwd username --expire
which may not be desirable.
bob SPARC = (OP) ALL : SGI = (OP) ALL
The user
bob may run anything
on the
SPARC
and SGI
machines as any user listed in the
OP
Runas_Alias (root and
operator.)
jim +biglab = ALL
The user
jim may run any
command on machines in the
biglab
netgroup. sudo knows that “biglab” is
a netgroup due to the ‘+’ prefix.
+secretaries ALL = PRINTING, /usr/bin/adduser, /usr/bin/rmuser
Users in the 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.
fred ALL = (DB) NOPASSWD: ALL
The user
fred can run
commands as any user in the
DB
Runas_Alias
(oracle
or
sybase)
without giving a password.
john ALPHA = /usr/bin/su [!-]*, !/usr/bin/su *root*
On the ALPHA machines, user john may su to anyone except root but he is not allowed to specify any options to the su(1) command.
jen ALL, !SERVERS = ALL
The user
jen may run any
command on any machine except for those in the SERVERS
Host_Alias (primary, mail, www and ns).
jill SERVERS = /usr/bin/, !SU, !SHELLS
For any machine in the SERVERS
Host_Alias,
jill may run any
commands in the directory /usr/bin/ except for those
commands belonging to the SU and SHELLS
Cmnd_Aliases. While not specifically mentioned in
the rule, the commands in the
PAGERS
Cmnd_Alias all reside in
/usr/bin and have the noexec
option set.
steve CSNETS = (operator) /usr/local/op_commands/
The user steve may run any command in the directory /usr/local/op_commands/ but only as user operator.
matt valkyrie = KILL
On his personal workstation, valkyrie, matt needs to be able to kill hung processes.
WEBADMIN www = (www) ALL, (root) /usr/bin/su www
On the host www, any user in the
WEBADMIN
User_Alias (will, wendy, and wim), may run any
command as user www (which owns the web pages) or simply
su(1) to www.
ALL CDROM = NOPASSWD: /sbin/umount /CDROM,\ /sbin/mount -o nosuid\,nodev /dev/cd0a /CDROM
Any user may mount or unmount a CD-ROM on the machines in the
CDROM 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.
It is generally not effective to “subtract” commands
from ALL using the
‘!’ operator. A user can trivially
circumvent this by copying the desired command to a different name and then
executing that. For example:
bill ALL = ALL, !SU, !SHELLS
Doesn't really prevent bill from running the commands listed in SU or 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).
In general, if a user has sudo 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
‘!’ elements in the user
specification.
If the 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 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.
For example, given the following sudoers file entry:
john ALL = /usr/bin/passwd [a-zA-Z0-9]*, /usr/bin/chsh [a-zA-Z0-9]*,\
/usr/bin/chfn [a-zA-Z0-9]*, !/usr/bin/* root
User john can still run
/usr/bin/passwd root if fast_glob
is enabled by changing to /usr/bin and running
./passwd root instead.
Once 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 sudo's access
control and logging. Common programs that permit shell escapes include
shells (obviously), editors, paginators, mail and terminal programs.
There are two basic approaches to this problem:
sudoedit is a better solution to
running editors via 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.LD_PRELOAD) to an alternate shared library. On
such systems, sudo's noexec
functionality can be used to prevent a program run by
sudo from executing any other programs. Note,
however, that this applies only to dynamically-linked executables.
Statically-linked executables and executables running under binary
emulation are not affected.
The noexec feature is known to work on
SunOS, Solaris, *BSD, Linux, IRIX, Tru64 UNIX, macOS, HP-UX 11.x and AIX
5.3 and above. It should be supported on most operating systems that
support the 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
LD_PRELOAD is supported.
On Solaris 10 and higher, noexec uses
Solaris privileges instead of the LD_PRELOAD
environment variable.
To enable noexec for a command, use the
NOEXEC tag as documented in the User
Specification section above. Here is that example again:
aaron shanty = NOEXEC: /usr/bin/more, /usr/bin/vi
This allows user aaron to run /usr/bin/more and /usr/bin/vi with 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 noexec you can always just try it out and check whether shell escapes work when noexec is enabled.
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 sudoedit (see
below).
The sudoers plugin includes
sudoedit support which allows users to securely edit
files with the editor of their choice. As sudoedit
is a built-in command, it must be specified in the sudoers
file without a leading path. However, it may take command line arguments
just as a normal command does. Wildcards used in sudoedit
command line arguments are expected to be path names, so a forward slash
(‘/’) will not be matched by a
wildcard.
Unlike other sudo commands, the editor is
run with the permissions of the invoking user and with the environment
unmodified. More information may be found in the description of the
-e option in sudo(8).
For example, to allow user operator to edit the “message of the day” file:
operator sudoedit /etc/motd
The operator user then runs sudoedit as
follows:
$ sudoedit /etc/motd
The editor will run as the operator user, not root, on a temporary copy of /etc/motd. After the file has been edited, /etc/motd will be updated with the contents of the temporary copy.
Users should never be
granted sudoedit permission to edit a file that
resides in a directory the user has write access to, either directly or via
a wildcard. If the user has write access to the directory it is possible to
replace the legitimate file with a link to another file, allowing the
editing of arbitrary files. To prevent this, starting with version 1.8.16,
symbolic links will not be followed in writable directories and
sudoedit will refuse to edit a file located in a
writable directory unless the
sudoedit_checkdir
option has been disabled or the invoking user is root. Additionally, in
version 1.8.15 and higher, sudoedit will refuse to
open a symbolic link unless either the sudoedit_follow
option is enabled or the sudoedit command is prefixed with
the FOLLOW tag in the sudoers
file.
sudoers will check the ownership of its
time stamp directory (/run/sudo/ts by default) 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
sudo stored time stamp files in
/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.
While the time stamp directory
should be cleared
at reboot time, not all systems contain a /run or
/var/run directory. To avoid potential problems,
sudoers will ignore time stamp files that date from
before the machine booted on systems where the boot time is available.
Some systems with graphical desktop environments allow
unprivileged users to change the system clock. Since
sudoers relies on the system clock for time stamp
validation, it may be possible on such systems for a user to run
sudo for longer than
timestamp_timeout by setting the clock back. To combat
this, sudoers uses a monotonic clock (which never
moves backwards) for its time stamps if the system supports it.
sudoers will not honor time stamps set far
in the future. Time stamps with a date greater than current_time + 2 *
TIMEOUT will be ignored and
sudoers will log and complain.
If the timestamp_type option is set to “tty”, the time stamp record includes the device number of the terminal the user authenticated with. This provides per-terminal granularity but time stamp records may still outlive the user's session.
Unless the timestamp_type option is set to “global”, 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. On systems where a process's start time can be queried, the start time of the session leader is recorded in the time stamp record. If no terminal is present or the timestamp_type option is set to “ppid”, the start time of the parent process is used instead. In most cases this will prevent a time stamp record from being re-used without the user entering a password when logging out and back in again.
Versions 1.8.4 and higher of the 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 sudo.conf(5) file.
The sudoers plugin uses the
same debug flag format as the sudo front-end:
subsystem@priority.
The priorities used by sudoers,
in order of decreasing severity, are: crit,
err,
warn,
notice,
diag,
info,
trace
and debug. Each priority, when specified, also includes
all priorities higher than it. For example, a priority of
notice would include debug messages logged at
notice and higher.
The following subsystems are used by the
sudoers plugin:
User_Alias,
Runas_Alias, Host_Alias
and Cmnd_Alias processingsudoersDebug sudo /var/log/sudo_debug match@info,nss@info
For more information, see the sudo.conf(5) manual.
ssh(1), su(1), fnmatch(3), glob(3), mktemp(3), strftime(3), sudo.conf(5), sudo_plugin(5), sudoers.ldap(5), sudoers_timestamp(5), sudo(8), visudo(8)
Many people have worked on sudo over the
years; this version consists of code written primarily by:
See the CONTRIBUTORS file in the sudo
distribution (https://www.sudo.ws/contributors.html) for an exhaustive list
of people who have contributed to sudo.
The sudoers file should
always
be edited by the visudo utility which locks the file
and checks for syntax errors. If sudoers contains syntax
errors, sudo may refuse to run, which is a serious
problem if sudo is your only method of obtaining
superuser privileges. Recent versions of sudoers
will attempt to recover after a syntax error by ignoring the rest of the
line after encountering an error. Older versions of
sudo will not run if sudoers
contains a syntax error.
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 hostname command or use the
fqdn option in sudoers.
If you feel you have found a bug in sudo,
please submit a bug report at https://bugzilla.sudo.ws/
Limited free support is available via the sudo-users mailing list, see https://www.sudo.ws/mailman/listinfo/sudo-users to subscribe or search the archives.
sudo is provided “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
sudo or https://www.sudo.ws/license.html for
complete details.
| January 8, 2020 | Sudo 1.9.5p2 |