The macosxhints Forums - Edit 'hosts' by non-administrators

honestpuck, 10.5.x /usr/bin/sudo honors the -e flag, but in testing it seems to always try to force the file to be in /var/tmp (no matter what path you gave the filename) and appends a 6 character, seemingly random file extension on the end of the filename. It's not particularly clear to me what it is trying to do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by man sudo

Code:

       -e  The -e (edit) option indicates that, instead of running a command,

           the user wishes to edit one or more files.  In lieu of a command,

           the string "sudoedit" is used when consulting the sudoers file.  If

           the user is authorized by sudoers the following steps are taken:



           1.      Temporary copies are made of the files to be edited with

                   the owner set to the invoking user.



           2.      The editor specified by the VISUAL or EDITOR environment

                   variables is run to edit the temporary files.  If neither

                   VISUAL nor EDITOR are set, the program listed in the editor

                   sudoers variable is used.



           3.      If they have been modified, the temporary files are copied

                   back to their original location and the temporary versions

                   are removed.



           If the specified file does not exist, it will be created.  Note

           that unlike most commands run by sudo, the editor is run with the

           invoking user's environment unmodified.  If, for some reason, sudo

           is unable to update a file with its edited version, the user will

           receive a warning and the edited copy will remain in a temporary

           file.

Trevor