[sudo-users] Adding support to sudo to open a file with elevated privileges

[Matthew.Stier at fujitsu.com]

If you don't like 'tee', try 'cat'.

echo "something" | sudo bash -c "cat >> /etc/some_file"

Of course, this means your invoking an entire shell, to implement the redirection, rather than a simple command.  The 'tee' option would be more secure.

-----Original Message-----
From: sudo-users <sudo-users-bounces at sudo.ws> On Behalf Of Piotr Dobrogost
Sent: Saturday, September 4, 2021 6:51 AM
To: sudo-users at sudo.ws
Subject: [sudo-users] Adding support to sudo to open a file with elevated privileges

Hi!

People often run into a problem trying to redirect output of a command being run with sudo to a file which is writable by the target user but is not writable by the user running sudo:

sudo echo "something" > /etc/some_file

The suggested workaround – https://superuser.com/q/136646/664 (How to append to a file as sudo?) – is to use tee:
echo "something" | sudo tee /etc/config_file > /dev/null

Would it make sense to add support to sudo for opening a file with elevated privileges? This would avoid having to use an external program for this basic functionality and would avoid having to redirect standard output to /dev/null which is the case when using tee?

Something along the lines of
echo "something" | sudo --out /etc/config_file


Best regards,
Piotr Dobrogost
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