Comment 0 for bug 982684

Revision history for this message
Steve Langasek (vorlon) wrote : sudo doesn't apply global environment settings from /etc/environment

In connection with the recent update-notifier changes (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Specs/UpdateNotifierPackageDataDownloader), some users who were previously able to download the flashplugin via the apt proxy settings are now unable to download it when running, e.g., 'sudo apt-get install'.

The reason for this is that, even though a global proxy may be configured in /etc/environment, sudo does not allow $http_proxy to be inherited by default and does not reapply the environment from /etc/environment (and from /etc/default/locale) via pam_env.

The first part is reasonable, but I question the second part. Since these are global config files, I believe it's safe for sudo to apply the environment settings by default just as 'su' does; and the settings are intended to apply globally, which would include to sudo sessions.

This would make update-notifier work more reliably for users with proxies, and would probably help with a variety of other cases where global variables are currently not being set as expected for sudo.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: sudo 1.8.3p1-1ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-22.35-generic 3.2.14
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-22-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CheckboxSubmission: 017452a27eca3c8b498abbfa5ef91db9
CheckboxSystem: ecaaad6fa1e0799a0aa1126bf620f39e
Date: Sun Apr 15 16:41:17 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100816.1)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: sudo
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2011-11-08 (159 days ago)