Bug 942 – visudo fails if $EDITOR contains quotes

Bug 942 - visudo fails if $EDITOR contains quotes


Summary:	visudo fails if $EDITOR contains quotes

Status:	RESOLVED FIXED

Product:	Sudo
Classification:	Unclassified
Component:	Visudo
Version:	1.9.2
Hardware:	PC Linux

Importance:	low low
Assigned To:	Todd C. Miller

URL:

Depends on:
Blocks:
	Show dependency tree / graph

Reported:	2020-10-27 15:49 MDT by Peter Oliver
Modified:	2021-09-11 15:57 MDT (History)
CC List:	1 user (show)

See Also:

Attachments
Patch to honor quotes in EDITOR and collapse backslashes. (5.42 KB, patch) 2020-11-12 16:24 MST, Todd C. Miller	Details \| Diff
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Description Peter Oliver 2020-10-27 15:49:48 MDT

visudo fails if $EDITOR isn't a simple space-separated list of arguments.  For example:

# env EDITOR='sh -c "vi \$1"' visudo
\$1": -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"'
\$1": -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file
visudo: /etc/sudoers.tmp unchanged

(This is a simplified example, but my actual use-case it to send a message to an already-running instance of Emacs to tell it to open visudo's temporary file.  Background at https://github.com/magit/with-editor/issues/84)

Comment 1 Todd C. Miller 2020-11-12 16:24:56 MST

Created attachment 547 [details]
Patch to honor quotes in EDITOR and collapse backslashes.

Can you try the following patch and verify that it fixes your use case?  It can be applied to either sudo 1.9.3 or the current sources in mercurial or github.

Comment 2 Peter Oliver 2020-11-15 07:01:50 MST

Yes, the patch works for me.  Thanks!

Comment 3 Todd C. Miller 2020-11-30 13:24:33 MST

Fixed in sudo 1.9.4