Setting the root password, (bash_completion <-> sudo)

[Paul Sladen]

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004, [ISO-8859-1] Fábio Macêdo Mendes wrote:
> Paul Sladen wrote:
> > I have bash_completion turned on for sudo and the like; 
> we can make sudo be a script that points to the real sudo and program
> bash programable completion in /etc/bash_completion or
> /etc/bash_completion.d/ to complete commands that would be in sbin
> paths. The sudo script is very simple:

Don't understand quite would you mean---and I'm not quite sure why it would
help.  The sudo/fakeroot completion code already exists and is reliable.  
It can be enabled by uncommenting the following lines:

    # enable programmable completion features (you don't need to enable
    # this, if it's already enabled in /etc/bash.bashrc).
    if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
      . /etc/bash_completion
    fi

In either:

    ~/.bashrc  or  /etc/bash.bashrc

The code itself is implemented in:

    /etc/bash_completion

Specifically the functions:

    # A meta-command completion function for commands like sudo(8), which need to
    # first complete on a command, then complete according to that command's own
    # completion definition - currently not quite foolproof (e.g. mount and  umount
    # don't work properly), but still quite useful
    #
    _command()
    {
        ...
    }

To deal with this, the completion is called with the new PATH contain */sbin:

    _root_command()
    {
            PATH=$PATH:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin _command $1
    }
    complete -F _root_command $filenames sudo fakeroot

which setups up the the `sudo' and `fakeroot' commands lines to be
re-evaluated after having their first item removed (eg. "sudo ").  The
completion from the point done on the new, expanded path (including /sbin).

I believe it would be useful to have this enabled on a system-wide basis
and as the default.  It should help encourage people to use sudo aswell.

	-Paul
-- 
Is there no safe way to travel?  Nottingham, GB