sudo + SSH

[Chris Jepeway]

>     First, I want to thank you for making "sudo" freely available - it's
> a great tool!
Well, thanks, but Todd Miller is sudo's primary
author, and he's the one responsible for making it
free to the world and seeing to it that everybody
can use it.

> I am having a problem with it however.  For the ultimate
> in security, I sometimes use it in combination with SSH.  But when I do
> that, sudo echoes my password back to the screen.  I'm not sure if it's
> caused by sudo or SSH.  Help!  Thanks.
Um, well, how are you using it?  If as follows

	host1% ssh host2 sudo rm /etc/passwd

then host2 hasn't allocated a tty, and, when it
runs sudo, there's no place for it to say "stop
echoing characters."  This is a general problem
with remote commands, not just with sudo.  You get
the same thing if you did this:

	host1% ssh host2 passwd root

if you were trying to change the root passwd on
host2 from host1.

If you're using ssh to log into host2 from host1,
like this

	host1% ssh host
	awong at magazine.net's password:
	[You type your password]
	[A bunch of login banners are displayed]
	host2% sudo rm /etc/passwd
	Password:

then sudo should not echo the password when you type it
the second time.  I don't quite know what could be going
on if this is the case, so I've cc'ed the sudo-users at courtesan.com
mailing list so folk there can steer you straight.

> Allen
Chris.