Ubuntu – How to solve “permission denied” when using sudo with redirection in Bash

bashcommand linesudo

When using sudo to allow edits to files, I regularly get 'permission denied'.

For example, my mouse is jittery and sluggish, so I want to disable polling:

sudo echo "options drm_kms_helper poll=N">/etc/modprobe.d/local.conf

I'm prompted for a password, and then get:

bash: /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf: Permission denied

So I tried to do a temporary change to disable polling by using:

sudo echo N> /sys/module/drm_kms_helper/parameters/poll

Yet again the system responded with:

bash: /sys/module/drm_kms_helper/parameters/poll: Permission denied

Any ideas?

Best Answer

Output redirection (via the > operator) is done by the shell, not by echo. You have to login as root

sudo -i

Then you can use redirection 

echo N> /sys/module/drm_kms_helper/parameters/poll

Otherwise you can run bash string with sudo

sudo bash -c "echo N> /sys/module/drm_kms_helper/parameters/poll"
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