Linux – Sudo – is there a command to check if I have sudo and/or how much time is left

bashlinuxsudo

(Originally posted on Stack Overflow. They suggested I try here instead. Here's the original post: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3858208/sudo-is-there-a-command-to-check-if-i-have-sudo-and-or-how-much-time-is-left)

See title. I want a command that lets me query sudo. Ideally it would return success if I still have sudo and false if sudo has expired. Getting the time left might also be useful (although if I was concerned I could just do sudo -v to revalidate.) Oh and it shouldn't have to ask for a password.

The closest thing I've found is "sudo -n true", but the -n option is only present on my Centos 5 machine at work. -n fails if it has to ask for a password. Is there any other way to get this functionality? Assume I don't actually have root on all the machines I work with, so I can't install new versions of sudo to my liking.

For what it's worth I'm doing this so I can get my prompt to indicate sudo status. I like knowing which terminals are actively sudo-able. I also have a prompt that changes colors when I'm root, but I don't use root very often so that's of limited use.

Best Answer

The -n option is available in newer versions of sudo, but as you stated that's not an option. There's no real way to do what you're looking for short of just trying sudo and seeing if it comes back with a prompt for a password. If your concern is you want a visual indication, why not start do sudo /bin/bash to start a root bash session? Note that this is insecure, but it's also somewhat insecure if someone realizes your prompt changes on sudo.

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Linux – How to make Shared Keys .ssh/authorized_keys and sudo work together

ssh and sudo have nothing to do with each other. Setting up an ssh authentication method isn't going to do anything for sudo. sudo isn't going to understand an ssh password.

passwd -l is intended to lock a user's account, so that he can no longer authenticate by password. That's pretty much the opposite of what you want, which is letting the user authenticate without a password.

I think what you want is the NOPASSWD option in your sudoers file.

(PS, there's no reason to be running a cd command with sudo. cd does not propagate to parent processes, so as soon as the sudo exits, you're back where you started.)

Edit: You keep saying that you want to lock the account password and want sudo to understand public/private keys. Sorry, sudo isn't going to use ssh keys. It isn't ssh. If you don't want users to be able to log in with their passwords, I think the answer is to disable ssh password authentication, not to lock the account. Then you can retain a password for the users, which they can use to sudo after they log in via ssh authorized_keys.

Linux – How to check if I have sudo access

Run sudo -v. It is usually used to extend your sudo password timeout, but can be used for determining whether you have any sudo privileges.

$ sudo -v
Sorry, user [username] may not run sudo on [hostname].

Man page excerpt:

If given the -v (validate) option, sudo will update the user’s time stamp, prompting for the user’s password if necessary. This extends the sudo timeout for another 5 minutes (or whatever the timeout is set to in sudoers) but does not run a command.

If your user is only allowed to run specific commands, this command will work, indicating you are allowed to run something with different privileges. While the message looks different when trying to execute a command you're not allowed to in this case (and no mail is sent to root), it's still possible you'll get into trouble if the admins read /var/log/secure.

$ sudo ls
[sudo] password for [username]: 
Sorry, user [username] is not allowed to execute '/bin/ls' as root on [hostname].

To find out what you're allowed to run with different privileges, you can use sudo -l. Note that this command requires you to enter your password.

Best Answer

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Linux – How to make Shared Keys .ssh/authorized_keys and sudo work together

Linux – How to check if I have sudo access

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