Sudo upgrade from debian-security changes env handling
If you’ve recently update to the latest debian security release of sudo (1.6.8p7-1.3) which amongst other bugs fixes CVE-2005-4158: Insecure handling of PERLLIB PERL5LIB PERL5OPT environment vars then you’ve probably started getting errors like the following:
- E138: Can’t write viminfo file $HOME/.viminfo!
- dircolors: no SHELL environment variable, and no shell type option given
Sometimes I wish the changelogs would be clearer and maybe every so often a debconf message would save the hassle of an hours googling vim error codes. “Reverse the environment semantic by forcing users to maintain a whitelist [env.c, Bug#342948, CVE-2005-4158]” isn’t really that informative.
Anyway, the quick fix option is adding Defaults env_reset in /etc/sudoers.
Chris Said,
January 28, 2006 @ 9:28 am
Thanks for the tip it works great.
MathieuMa Said,
February 1, 2006 @ 10:31 pm
Thanks a lot, that was pretty annoying 😀
Matt Kern Said,
April 8, 2006 @ 8:39 am
That had been annoying the hell out of me for weeks! Thanks for the post!