Bug 797 – sudo not changing to user's home

Bug 797 - sudo not changing to user's home


Summary:	sudo not changing to user's home

Status:	RESOLVED FIXED

Product:	Sudo
Classification:	Unclassified
Component:	Sudo
Version:	1.8.15
Hardware:	IBM AIX

Importance:	low normal
Assigned To:	Todd C. Miller

URL:

Depends on:
Blocks:
	Show dependency tree / graph

Reported:	2017-08-30 07:07 MDT by Henrik Morsing
Modified:	2020-09-22 07:46 MDT (History)
CC List:	1 user (show)

See Also:

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Description Henrik Morsing 2017-08-30 07:07:14 MDT

Using -H or always_set_home still preserves root's home directory:

--> sudo -V
Sudo version 1.8.15
[...]
Environment variables to preserve:
        XAUTHORIZATION
        XAUTHORITY
        PS2
        PS1
        PATH
        LS_COLORS
        KRB5CCNAME
        HOSTNAME
        DISPLAY
        COLORS
[...]
--> sudo -H -u metron pwd
/
--> sudo -u metron ksh
$ pwd
/
$

We have had this problem with 1.6.9p15 for years, decided to upgrade, but 1.8.15 does the same.

Thanks

Comment 1 Todd C. Miller 2017-08-30 09:12:09 MDT

Sudo has never changed the current working directory but this is unrelated to the value of the HOME environment variable.

If you run "sudo -u metro printenv HOME" you will see that it is being set to the proper value.

I'm leaving this bug open since it would be useful to have an option that changes the cwd to the destination user's home directory.

Comment 2 Daniele Palumbo 2017-12-06 18:15:34 MST

+1 on this

Comment 3 Todd C. Miller 2020-09-22 07:46:03 MDT

In sudo 1.9.3 you can set the CWD on a per-rule basis or globally.  For example, to always run commands in the target user's homedir you can use:

Defaults runcwd=~

where '~' stands for the user's homedir.