[sudo-users] Sudo seems to run mail command and fails on read-only file system

Geoffrey Viljoen geoff at wilson-cooke.co.uk
Wed Dec 8 07:44:44 EST 2010


My machine has entered a read-only file system state. I'd like to try 
copy some files with root permissions (e.g. mysql data) to an external 
mount before rebooting. Unfortunately, when I use sudo, it complains 
about the read-only file system and aborts.

Any idea how to get around this?

Here's the kernel running:
myusername at myhost:~$ uname -a
Linux myhost 2.6.24-16-server #1 SMP Thu Apr 10 13:58:00 UTC 2008 i686 
GNU/Linux

Here's what happens when you run sudo:
myusername at myhost:~$ sudo ls
[sudo] password for myusername:
mail: /tmp/mail.RsXXXX6hYU4p: Read-only file system
Aborted
myusername at myhost:~$

The sudo version is 1.6.9p10.

Does anyone know what sudo might be attempting to do with the mail 
command when I correctly authenticate?



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