1 Notes on upgrading from an older release
2 ========================================
4 o Upgrading from a version prior to 1.6:
6 As of sudo 1.6, parsing of runas entries and the NOPASSWD tag
7 has changed. Prior to 1.6, a runas specifier applied only to
8 a single command directly following it. Likewise, the NOPASSWD
9 tag only allowed the command directly following it to be run
10 without a password. Starting with sudo 1.6, both the runas
11 specifier and the NOPASSWD tag are "sticky" for an entire
12 command list. So, given the following line in sudo < 1.6
14 millert ALL=(daemon) NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/whoami,/bin/ls
16 millert would be able to run /usr/bin/whoami as user daemon
17 without a password and /bin/ls as root with a password.
19 As of sudo 1.6, the same line now means that millert is able
20 to run run both /usr/bin/whoami and /bin/ls as user daemon
21 without a password. To expand on this, take the following
24 millert ALL=(daemon) NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/whoami, (root) /bin/ls, \
27 millert can run /usr/bin/whoami as daemon and /bin/ls and
28 /sbin/dump as root. No password need be given for either
29 command. In other words, the "(root)" sets the default runas
30 user to root for the rest of the list. If we wanted to require
31 a password for /bin/ls and /sbin/dump the line could be written
34 millert ALL=(daemon) NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/whoami, \
35 (root) PASSWD:/bin/ls, /sbin/dump
37 Additionally, sudo now uses a per-user timestamp directory
38 instead of a timestamp file. This allows tty timestamps to
39 simply be files within the user's timestamp dir. For the
40 default, non-tty case, the timestamp on the directory itself
43 Also, the temporary file used by visudo is now /etc/sudoers.tmp
44 since some versions of vipw on systems with shadow passwords use
45 /etc/stmp for the temporary shadow file.
47 o Upgrading from a version prior to 1.5:
49 By default, sudo expects the sudoers file to be mode 0440 and
50 to be owned by user and group 0. This differs from version 1.4
51 and below which expected the sudoers file to be mode 0400 and
52 to be owned by root. Doing a `make install' will set the sudoers
53 file to the new mode and group. If sudo encounters a sudoers
54 file with the old permissions it will attempt to update it to
55 the new scheme. You cannot, however, use a sudoers file with
56 the new permissions with an old sudo binary. It is suggested
57 that if have a means of distributing sudo you distribute the
58 new binaries first, then the new sudoers file (or you can leave
59 sudoers as is and sudo will fix the permissions itself as long
60 as sudoers is on a local filesystem).