Sudoers Rediculous Syntax
I came across something that threw me for a loop today. I needed to modify sudoers so that I can help secure a service account to execute a script as a different user. So here’s my config that was dropped in /etc/sudoers.d/somefile
Cmd_Alias THISCOMMAND = /path/to/the/script
serviceaccount ALL = (otheruser) NOPASSWD: THISCOMMAND
Defaults!THISCOMMAND !requiretty
Nothing out of the ordinary, but when validating the command, sudo fails with an error message:
[root@hostname ~]# sudo -l -U serviceaccount
sudo: >>> /etc/sudoers.d/somefile: syntax error near line 3 <<<
sudo: parse error in /etc/sudoers.d/somefile near line 3
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting
sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin
Checking and rechecking the man page and sudo documentation lead me no where. I even moved this config information into visudo, which worked fine. So I KNOW my syntax is correct. Long story short, sudo is expecting a new line in the file. After throwing a new line in the config, all is well. Here’s the diff:
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
Cmnd_Alias THISCOMMAND = /path/to/the/script
serviceaccount ALL = (otheruser) NOPASSWD: THISCOMMAND
-Defaults!THISCOMMAND !requiretty
\ No newline at end of file
+Defaults!THISCOMMAND !requiretty
After that, validating sudo returned what I expected it too.
I’m not the only person that has seen this either:
