technical question

[Daniel Robitaille]

On 23/05/05, Norman Silverstone <norman at littletank.org> wrote:
> For a number of administration actions it is necessary for me to enter a
> password. Once this has been done this entry remains in force for some
> time before I am required to enter the password again. Can someone
> please tell me how long this delay is or, if it is machine dependant,
> how do I find out other than by trial and error? I want to carry out
> some tests and it is important for me to know this timing fairly
> accurately.
> 
> Thanks in advance

it is controlled via the /etc/sudoers file and should be 15 minutes by default:

man sudoers

       timestamp_timeout
                   Number of minutes that can elapse before sudo will ask for
                   a passwd again.  The default is 15.  Set this to 0 to
                   always prompt for a password.  If set to a value less than
                   0 the user's timestamp will never expire.  This can be used
                   to allow users to create or delete their own timestamps via
                   sudo -v and sudo -k respectively.

 
If you are going to edit that /etc/sudoers file to change that timeout
default, it is important that you use this command to do so:
    sudo visudo

you have been warned :)