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When I work with the terminal and use su or sudo to execute a command with the root user's permissions, is it possible to apply the configuration of my "non-root user" (from which I am invoking su or sudo) stored in this user's home directory?

For instance, consider that (being logged on as a non-root user) I would like to edit the configuration file /etc/some_file using vim and that my vim configuration file is located at /home/myuser/.vimrc. Firing up the command line and typing sudo vim /etc/some_file, I would want "my" beautiful and well-configured vim to show up. But what I get is an ugly vim with the default configuration, no plugins etc.

Can I make su or sudo use my user's configuration files instead of the root user's files located at /root?

zepp133
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2 Answers2

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Use sudo -E to preserve your environment:

$ export FOO=1
$ sudo -E env | grep FOO
FOO=1

That will preserve $HOME and any other environment variables you had, so the same configuration files you started with will be accessed by the programs running as root.

You can update sudoers to disable the env_reset setting, which clears out all environment variables and is generally enabled by default. You may have to enable the ability to use sudo -E at all in there as well. There are a few other sudoers settings that might be relevant: env_keep, which lets you specify specific variables to keep by default, and env_remove, which declares variables to delete always. You can use sudo sudo -V to see which variables are/are not preserved.

An alternative, if you can't modify sudoers, is to provide your environment explicitly:

sudo env HOME=$HOME command here

You can make a shell alias to do that automatically so you don't have to type it in.

Note that doing this (either way) can have potentially unwanted side effects: if the program you run tries to make files in your home directory, for example, those files will be created as root and your ordinary user won't be able to write to them.

For the specific case of vim, you could also put your .vimrc as the system-wide /etc/vimrc if you're the only user of this system.

Michael Homer
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  • Thanks, all approaches work. Eventually I went with Defaults env_reset and env_keep += "HOME", thus preserving my $HOME environment variable. – zepp133 Jul 18 '14 at 10:38
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Set up sudo to preserve the HOME environment variable.

Run visudo to edit the sudo configuration. Make sure that the option always_set_home is not set, and that HOME is present in the env_keep list. Add the following lines:

Defaults !always_set_home
Defaults env_keep+="HOME"

Remove a line like Defaults always_set_home if there is one.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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  • Although according to the sudo manpages this should work, I couldn't make it work, even after disabling env_reset (which is a necessary step according to the manual). – zepp133 Jul 18 '14 at 10:41
  • @SirSureE.Nuff Does it work if you add Defaults env_keep+="HOME"? Sorry, I forgot about this one initially. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 18 '14 at 11:35
  • No problem! Yes, adding env_keep (...) solved my problem. See my comment to the answer by Mr. Homer. – zepp133 Jul 18 '14 at 11:40