Be cautious of doing this with security sensitive files. When it copies the file and gives you ownership, any sensitive data in it is exposed to any process running as your user id, and and temporary fil£s the editor creates may also contain the sensitive content and be owned by you.
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
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Good point. I was always wondering how secure this is, as it works with copies of the files in my environment. Because I'm in my personal environment, doing sudoedit /etc/fstab does not let me edit other files from root while in that file. That means if any of the plugins from Vim tries to, they can't edit arbitrary files, right? (If you don't trust the plugin, then don't use, but that's another topic.) Little side note, just learned that sudoedit ~/.bashrc does not allow me to edit files in my home too.
Vim is running as you, rather than root, so you wont be able to edit other files as root, and any rogue plugins wont be able to either, which is good.
Sudoedit has various guards around what it'll let you edit, in particular, you can't edit a file in a directory you already have write permission on as doing so allows the user to bypass restrictions in the sudoers setup (there's more detail in their issue tracker. If the directory is already writable though, you don't need sudoedit anyway.
How is sudoedit shorter than sudo -e ? :D
Most admins will type sudoe<tab> , which is shorter
Good point. sudoe + TAB is 1 keystroke shorter than sudo -e :)
Easier to type, I think ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Not even a joke, I was sleepy (before going to bed) when making this post. :D So not sure why I said this. I like how the replies have good faith and trying to find a reason.^^ lovely community
Also. With sudo vim (or other editor) you can do privilege escalation, became root.
Yes. And this has huge implications, as as root user in Vim you can load and edit other files. While sudoedit is limited to your personal environment, as while the editing process no root privileges are in use. (I think...)
Doas moment x.x
Just get doasedit. I remember finding scripts that achieve similar functionality as sudoedit.
Appreciate you :)
Meanwhile, a reverse vim enjoyer like myself, using micro to edit any file running as my user. If it requires root to write, it will simply elevate the permissions for that operation when I press Ctrl+S, asking for password if needed.
Same idea with VSCodium, but via GUI polkit prompt.
Life is good when you don't hjkl ^_^
I had a problem where even if I tried to set the default editor to vim, it'd still not use my lazyvim setup and I never figured out how to fix it.
I use LazyVim too BTW. You mean it would not use in sudo environment or in your current environment?
It worked fine in my current environment, but not with sudoedit no. Can't remember exactly why, might look at it again. It worked for you just by setting the default editor variable?
It’s probably loading the home environment of root similar to sudo -H vim … instead of just elevating privileges but keeping your home environment.
I didn't do anything special to make that work. The variable export EDITOR='nvim' is set in my ".bash_profile" file in "Home" directly. The point of sudoedit is to use your personal environment, so it should pick it up. If there is any configuration needed to make this work, then I"m not aware of it.