Bug 415

Summary:	chmod on "sudoers" can't be undone
Product:	Sudo	Reporter:	Karl Woelfer <kwoelfer>
Component:	Sudoers	Assignee:	Todd C. Miller <Todd.Miller>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID
Severity:	high
Priority:	low
Version:	1.8.0
Hardware:	PC
OS:	Linux

Description Karl Woelfer 2010-07-07 21:06:46 MDT

With admin privileges, changed mode of sudoers file from 440 to 666. Vi edited the file and saved. Cannot change mode back to 0440.

sudo:/etc/sudoers is mode 0666, should be 0440.

I need to recover, i.e. backup to pre-edited sudoers, but how do I proceed? Vi-entered changes are not important.

Thank you,
Karl Woelfer

Comment 1 Todd C. Miller 2010-07-08 07:02:05 MDT

This is why you should use visudo to edit the sudoers file--it will validate the file and make sure the mode is correct.  You'll need to login as root and change the mode of /etc/sudoers to 0440.  Sudo will refuse to run if sudoers has a file mode that is not secure.