[sudo-users] Problem with 'sudo' ignoring switches

[Madison Kelly]

Hi all,

   I've got a program (perl script) where I use 'sudo' to perform 
certain shell tasks. Most of the time this works fine but every now and 
then the 'sudo' prompts for a password regardless of the switches, which 
kills my running program because I can't enter the password from the 
shell even if I did assume users would know the password.

   Specifically how I use 'sudo':

   When I need to perform a priviledged task I call a small sub routine 
called 'prep_sudo' where I first enter:

system "sudo -K\n";

   To make sure there wasn't already a valid time stamp. Then I set the 
timestamp by entering:

open (SUDO, '|sudo -S -v -p '.$say_sudo);
print SUDO "$passwd\n";
close (SUDO);

   The initial '|' is supposed to tell 'sudo' to take the input from the 
script. The '-S -v -p <string>' is supposed to prompt from the password 
but also tell sudo to take the password from a shell. I use '-p 
<string>' to make the request look more like my program.

   When it works I then perform whatever task using 'sudo' I need and 
then as soon as I am done I enter:

system "sudo -K\n";

   Again to make sure that the timestamp is gone, keeping the period of 
time where 'sudo' is available as short as possible.

   90% of the time this works perfectly. Every now and then though it 
seems to act like it didn't catch the switches. The reason I say this is 
because when this doesn't work my defined '-p <string>' is not printed 
and the default 'Password:' prompt is.

   Is there any know cases when 'sudo' ignores it's command line 
switches? I thought this might be a race condition so I tried adding a:

'sleep 1;'

   After killing the timestamp and before recreating the new timestamp 
but that didn't seem to help.

   Any advice would be much appreciated!

Madison