19

sudo in Ubuntu keeps asking me for my password for every command. Previously, I only had to enter the password once, and then it would be remembered for a period of time. This recently changed, probably after "upgrading" to Natty.

I've done sudo visudo and set Defaults env_reset, timestamp_timeout = 60, tried rebooting, but it's still not working. How do I fix this?

After suggestions below, my /etc/sudoers looks like this:

#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# Please consider adding local content in /etc/sudoers.d/ instead of
# directly modifying this file.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
#
Defaults        env_reset
Defaults:endolith timestamp_timeout=60

# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%sudo   ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

#includedir /etc/sudoers.d

Update:

I upgraded my VirtualBox and it started to suffer from the same problem. At a guess, I ran bash, and tried to sudo in that, and the password is remembered correctly. It's only when I use my default shell fish that it doesn't remember. It did in the previous Ubuntu release, but no longer.

Update:

I upgraded to 13.05 and this magically started working again. Now it asks for my password once, stops asking for a while, and then asks again after a period of time.

endolith
  • 7,704

4 Answers4

16

@endolith: Yes, it only seems to affect fish. I had the same problem, the issue is caused by the sudo option "tty_tickets". Disabling this on your /etc/sudoers file will solve the problem.

The following will disable tty_tickets:

Defaults        env_reset,!tty_tickets
Dave Lancea
  • 103
Kadu
  • 356
5

If nothing else works, try sudo -i (by itself). That'll give you a root shell after one password.

Broam
  • 4,084
1

I only had to enter the password once, and then it would be remembered for a period of time.

If I where to guess, I would bet that something about your /var/run/sudo directory is screwed up. This directory is where the timestamp files are stored. Maybe /var/run is full, maybe the permissions got screwed up. Anyway, look at that directory, I suspect your problem may be there.

The permissions on my folder look like this.

# find /var/run/sudo/ -ls
1164242    4 drwx------   6 root     root         4096 Jan  1  1985 /var/run/sudo/
1179694    4 drwx------   2 root     www-data     4096 Jan  1  1985 /var/run/sudo/www-data
1164286    4 drwx------   2 root     myuser      4096 Jul 21 23:03 /var/run/sudo/myuser
1163399    0 -rw-------   1 root     myuser         0 Jul 13 22:42 /var/run/sudo/myuser/0
1163453    0 -rw-------   1 root     myuser         0 Jul 21 22:59 /var/run/sudo/myuser/2
1164309    0 -rw-------   1 root     myuser         0 Jul 21 23:03 /var/run/sudo/myuser/6
1163303    0 -rw-------   1 root     myuser         0 Jul 13 22:31 /var/run/sudo/myuser/5

For good measure you might also want to try running sudo -K to kill your current timestamp files.

Zoredache
  • 20,438
0

I would check the /etc/sudoers.d/ directory.

You can also try to downgrade the sudo package to the previous version.

Michał Šrajer
  • 2,955