[Bug 1741398] Re: Commented line in sudoers file breaks sudo

[Marc Deslauriers]

Hi, Thanks for reporting this issue, but that is not a comment at all.

>From the sudoers man page:

     It is possible to include other sudoers files from within the sudoers
     file currently being parsed using the #include and #includedir direc‐
     tives.

While # is used in some applications to indicate the start of a comment,
it is not the case in the sudoers file. It's also not the case in other
situations too, for example, in a C file.

I am closing this bug.

** Changed in: sudo (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Invalid

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1741398

Title:
  Commented line in sudoers file breaks sudo

Status in sudo package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  Ubuntu 16.04 Amazon AWS image. 
  sudo:
    Installed: 1.8.16-0ubuntu1.5

  Used sudo visudo to edit /etc/sudoers file from the ubutntu admin user

  At the bottom of the file is a line

  #includedir /etc/sudoers.d

  I added a couple of lines at the end of the file to give permissions
  to another user. I accidentally hit backspace and altered the
  includedir line so it looked like this

  #includedir /etc/sudoercs

  I couldn't remember what the actual directory was at the time, but I
  thought, hey, its a commented line, it doesn't matter anyway. I was
  wrong.

  So visudo saved the file OK, but from then on, no valid sudo commands
  would work for any user. Including sudo visudo of course. Its an AWS
  instance, so no root login. Only recourse was to detach the volume,
  re-attach it to another instance, fix the spelling mistake.

  So obviously sudo freaked when the directory given didn't exist. But
  why would it, if the line is a comment? Something obviously wrong
  here. And given the lack of root, a particularly irritating and time
  consuming one.

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