Keeping the fancy sudo warning forever

Question

The first time I do sudo on openSUSE I'm always warned with a someway fancy message

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

    #1) Respect the privacy of others.
    #2) Think before you type.
    #3) With great power comes great responsibility.

root's password:

After the first successful login I won't be warned again.

I'd like to be always warned. I find this message someway fancy. Is there any way to be warned like that by sudo prompt?

To be honest if this shows every time I use `sudo`, I will still manage to ignore it and remove root directory or something like that. This will probably only work if the warning is a 3d banner blinking with multiple color which is different every time. — Ng Sek Long, Apr 15 '19 at 03:17
@NgSekLong I've seen (boring|terrible|lazy|startup character) ASCII banners in conjunction with poor system administration skills before. I guess it's not that simple but… uh challenge accepted? https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/07/view-gifs-on-the-command-line-because-why-not-right At worst you loose your compliance status, or even worse it's mandatory in the next revision of whatever rules you have to implement at work. — LiveWireBT, Jan 28 '21 at 02:07

score 61 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 05 '12 at 18:36

61

Create a file inside /etc/sudoers.d/ You can use this command

sudo nano /etc/sudoers.d/privacy

Now paste this line into the file.

Defaults        lecture = always

Now close Terminal/Konsole, Reopen it and try to do something with sudo.

answered Nov 05 '12 at 18:36

Babar Al-Amin

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Can I also disable the message by setting `lecture` to `never`? – Richard de Wit Jun 14 '17 at 10:16
1

Yes, the options for **lecture** are: `always` `never` `once` [sudoers man](https://www.sudo.ws/man/1.8.13/sudoers.man.html) – Chris Nov 28 '17 at 04:18
Can I reduce this to one line? `$ sudo echo "Defaults lecture = always" >> /etc/sudoers.d/privacy` gives permission denied. – Aaron Franke Nov 11 '18 at 07:30
`$ sudo echo "Defaults lecture = always" | sudo tee -a /etc/sudoers.d/privacy` – Oliver Ni Jun 18 '19 at 04:32
2

You don't need the `sudo` on the `echo` – chaosaffe Apr 15 '20 at 02:02
Using `sudoedit` would be a lot safer than `sudo nano` - if something goes wrong, you may not be able to run sudo again to fix it – Xen2050 Apr 12 '23 at 05:44

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered May 05 '14 at 07:21

6

To re-set an account to see the warning once more, delete the sudo records for that user.

root>  rm  /var/lib/sudo/<username>/*
root>  rmdir /var/lib/sudo/<username>

answered May 05 '14 at 07:21

Michael JAMES

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According to `man sudoers` on a CentOS 7 host, the default setting for `lecture_status_dir` is `/var/db/sudo/lectured` – cherdt Dec 18 '19 at 17:52

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 16 '22 at 16:52

3

To add to Michael JAMES's statement, locations might vary. On Fedora,

rpm -ql sudo

Shows a directory called:

/var/db/sudo

In this directory i found another directory called 'lectured' followed by my name. Removing my name from this directory show the warning again.

Edit: This is a one time solution to reset showing the message. You could of course use crontab to empty the directory so that the message is printed on a more regular basis.

edited Dec 16 '22 at 16:52

Cadoiz

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answered Jul 19 '16 at 11:02

Riccardo

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What does `rpm -ql` do, and is there a debian-equivalent? – Xen2050 Apr 12 '23 at 05:43

Keeping the fancy sudo warning forever

3 Answers3