Open a protected file form within man page/less?

Question

I was reading the man page for firewalld.service and I wanted to open up the service.xml from within the man page (which I believe is less).

I know :e would do the job if I had permissions, but instead I had to drop out of the man page, and use sudo less .../service.xml

How do I avoid this in the future?

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 24 '16 at 16:45

2

You can run an arbitrary command in man/less with an exclamation mark ("!").

Type

!sudo less .../service.xml

and press Enter to open a new less session as root within your unprivileged man or less.

answered Aug 24 '16 at 16:45

Deltik

I can't switch between files though, can I? – AncientSwordRage Aug 24 '16 at 16:53
@Pureferret: Not easily, no. I would just open `man` with the right privileges or use a terminal multiplexer like `byobu`. – Deltik Aug 24 '16 at 20:45

1 Answers1