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NB: Yes, I've read How can I tell if I'm in a tmux session from a bash script?

How can I find out whether I am running inside a Tmux session from my shell or shell script or shell function or alias if I used sudo su - in between?:

The problem

Community
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0xC0000022L
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2 Answers2

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In your /etc/sudoers file you can explicitly allow environment variables to propagate to the sudo environment.

Example

Defaults    requiretty

Defaults    env_reset
Defaults    env_keep =  "COLORS DISPLAY HOSTNAME HISTSIZE INPUTRC KDEDIR LS_COLORS"
Defaults    env_keep += "MAIL PS1 PS2 QTDIR USERNAME LANG LC_ADDRESS LC_CTYPE"
Defaults    env_keep += "LC_COLLATE LC_IDENTIFICATION LC_MEASUREMENT LC_MESSAGES"
Defaults    env_keep += "LC_MONETARY LC_NAME LC_NUMERIC LC_PAPER LC_TELEPHONE"
Defaults    env_keep += "LC_TIME LC_ALL LANGUAGE LINGUAS _XKB_CHARSET XAUTHORITY"

So one method would be to add a variable that is resultant of tmux and let it through.

slm
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  • Thanks, indeed that's one way (btw: one I know and had contemplated). And in this particular case I am able to modify `sudoers`, but I'll leave the question open to see whether some better method exists. – 0xC0000022L Jun 06 '14 at 13:38
  • That'll work for `sudo -s` but not for `sudo su -` since `su -` also resets the environment. Not that there's usually a good reason to run `su -` instead of keeping as much information about your environment as you can @0xC0000022L – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jun 06 '14 at 23:12
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% sudo su -- 2<<STATE
>    TMUX='$TMUX'
>    exec 2>/dev/tty 
> STATE
# . /dev/fd/2
# { 
#   echo "$TMUX"
#   echo "$TMUX" >&2
# }

###OUTPUT

/tmp/tmux-1000/default,23878,1
/tmp/tmux-1000/default,23878,1

sudo will close all file descriptors for its invoked process but 0,1,2 and you need /dev/tty on <&0 or you can't enter a password, but if you can accept blocking >&2 for the span it takes to run a single command then you can do the above.

You can use this technique to bring along whatever else you might like as well.

mikeserv
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    Nice, I need to check how well this works in case of unprivileged users running a `Cmnd_Alias`, but certainly a very interesting piece of info! – 0xC0000022L Jun 06 '14 at 13:57
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    @0xC0000022L - it works pretty well. It can be controlled with permissions, but one thing about `.dot` is it doesn't `exec` anything - it only requires read rights. So even when `su 4< – mikeserv Jun 06 '14 at 14:04
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    That's not very convenient for an interactive session though. However, you could do something like `exec $SHELL 2>/dev/tty` – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jun 06 '14 at 23:13
  • @Gilles - thanks for that. It took me a minute to figure out what you meant because I thought the shell would automatically reopen `>&2` but I was wrong. You likely can't `exec` it with a new process like that though without `chown`ing the file created by your last user first, but just `exec 2>/dev/tty` seems to do the trick anyway. I did it but added an `>&2` to `echo` as above and it worked. – mikeserv Jun 06 '14 at 23:32