[Bug 1741398] Re: Commented line in sudoers file breaks sudo

[Plutocrat]

cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=16.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=xenial
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS"


Possibly related: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sudo/+bug/501204

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to sudo in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1741398

Title:
  Commented line in sudoers file breaks sudo

Status in sudo package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Ubuntu 16.04 Amazon AWS image. 
  sudo:
    Installed: 1.8.16-0ubuntu1.5

  Used sudo visudo to edit /etc/sudoers file from the ubutntu admin user

  At the bottom of the file is a line

  #includedir /etc/sudoers.d

  I added a couple of lines at the end of the file to give permissions
  to another user. I accidentally hit backspace and altered the
  includedir line so it looked like this

  #includedir /etc/sudoercs

  I couldn't remember what the actual directory was at the time, but I
  thought, hey, its a commented line, it doesn't matter anyway. I was
  wrong.

  So visudo saved the file OK, but from then on, no valid sudo commands
  would work for any user. Including sudo visudo of course. Its an AWS
  instance, so no root login. Only recourse was to detach the volume,
  re-attach it to another instance, fix the spelling mistake.

  So obviously sudo freaked when the directory given didn't exist. But
  why would it, if the line is a comment? Something obviously wrong
  here. And given the lack of root, a particularly irritating and time
  consuming one.

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sudo/+bug/1741398/+subscriptions