The sudo password

passwordsudo

When installing things I am sometimes asked for my sudo password. I don't remember ever having one or setting one. But I do know my su password which has always worked fine for me. It is not the same as my sudo as it doesn't work when I try it.

How do I find out what my sudo password is?

Best Answer

It is usually your personal login password. For example:

derek$ sudo ls /var/log/secret
[sudo] password for derek: <type derek's login password> 
audit.log  audit.log.1  audit.log.2

This can be altered by policy files such as /etc/sudoers. See for example Set sudo password differently from login one

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Where is this information stored?

It's probably under /var/db/sudo or /var/run/sudo and you'll probably find directories of usernames with files under them ordered by tty number.

The actual privileges granted, including how long the sessions lasts before you have to enter your password again depends on how sudoers is setup. There's settings to grant/restrict a lot of different things, but those aren't stored in these files which only store timestamps. How long a session lasts, or when sudo needs to prompt for your password again, is determined by a delta of current time and the session timestamp in this directory, and how long sudo is setup to allow a session to last.

The correct way to abort an operation from the sudo password prompt

What I usually do is Ctrl + Z to suspend the task, then kill %1 or even kill -9 %1 to stop:

> sudo ls
[sudo] password for user:

Ctrl + Z

[1]  +   512 Suspended                     sudo ls
> kill %1
[1]  + Suspended (tty output)        sudo ls
> kill -9 %1
[1]    Killed                        sudo ls

(In case you have more background tasks in your shell: The number you need to give after the percent sign is the one in brackets []).

Best Answer

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The correct way to abort an operation from the sudo password prompt

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