Disturbing messages from visudo

[Benjamin Goldsteen]

I am configuring sudo on an SGI IRIX 6.5 system and I am getting error
messages that lead me to believe that the internal Editor variable is
being overwritten.  This isn't necessarily a security problem in that
visudo isn't normally run setuid, but it somewhat disturbing.

I run visudo to create a file such as:

#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# See the sudoers man page for the details on how to write a sudoers
file.
#

# Host alias specification
# User alias specification
# Cmnd alias specification
Cmnd_Alias APACHECTL=/etc/init.d/apache
# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
local   yellow2=APACHECTL stop, /etc/init.d/apache start,
/etc/init.d/apache graceful, /etc/init.d/apache restart

When I try to save it, I get this error:
>>> sudoers file: syntax error, line 13 <<<
[why?]

When I try to edit the erronious file, I get this:
What now? e
sh: Cmnd_Alias:  not found
/usr/global/sudo/sbin.mips/visudo: Editor (Cmnd_Alias) failed with exit
status 32512, /usr/global/sudo/etc/sudoers unchanged.

I've done a little debugging and it seems somewhat the internal variable
"Editor" becomes overwritten during execution.  This error occurs
regardless of whether or not the UNIX environment variable "EDITOR" is
set.

Thanks

--
Benjamin Z. Goldsteen
Physiology & Biophysics
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
212-241-1614 / 212-860-3369 (FAX)