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How can I edit a remote file with sudo?

I have ssh/scp access to remote server, and passwordless sudo on it.

I want to edit /etc/some/file as remote root, so I ran:

  $ Vi scp://server/etc/some/file

It doesn't work, however, citing I don't have enough permissions. How can I do this?

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You can log into remote system using ssh remoteserver, and on remote server execute sudo vim /etc/myfile. OR one command: ssh -t remoteserver sudo vi /etc/myfile – taro Nov 26 '11 at 8:12
@taro What if he does not have a login shell on that machine? – Swiss Nov 26 '11 at 8:15
If he does not have login, he can scp remote:/etc/myfile ~/myfile, edit vim ~/myfile, but it will be a problem to overwrite remote file with changed one. – taro Nov 26 '11 at 8:21
The main aim is to use local vim (with my settings, my keymap etc) on remote. Yes, i can install on every host my settings -- but that ugly way. – datacompboy Nov 26 '11 at 11:32

migrated from stackoverflow.com Nov 26 '11 at 15:42

3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

One big pitfall here is that when editing a file with sudo, you can easily execute other root-only - commands:

sudo vi /etc/passwd

Inside vim, run command:

:!whoami

The same is true for less, here you are also able run commands. I wasn't aware of this security hole by myself - so watch out!

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up vote 0 down vote

According this wiki page you should specify your username and host like that:

vim scp://user@server//etc/some/file

And thanks for the tip, I didn't know that vim is capable of editing files via scp.

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Sorry, seems like it doesn't solve the problem with permissions unless you log in as root. – KL-7 Nov 26 '11 at 8:18
The problem with permissions is not a problem. If you want to do root-level stuff you just login as root, that's a good thing in my book. Your solution works well. – romainl Nov 26 '11 at 10:12
I have already said -- that doesn't allows to access sudo-accessible files. – datacompboy Nov 26 '11 at 11:32
And problem with permissions IS main part question. Use root-access is strictly prohibited even with key. – datacompboy Nov 26 '11 at 11:32
1  
Remote editing in Vim is not done on the remote server. The file is downloaded locally and re-uploaded after save – romainl Nov 26 '11 at 15:37
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up vote 0 down vote

To expand on my comment…

Vim doesn't do that kind of fancy thing on the remote machine, no matter what account you use. It's limited to downloading and uploading: reading a remote file means downloading the file in a temporary location on your local machine, writing a remote file means uploading the local copy to the remote machine.

It means that you won't be able to sudo before editing on the remote machine.

If the account used to write/upload the file is not root you can't overwrite the root-owned file. That's basic UNIX/server security.

Instead, ssh into the server and use Vim there or use KL-7's snippet with the right account.

See :help netrw-xfer, and :help netrw-quickmap for additional features such as directory listing. No sudo in sight.

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You can do that in emacs, his trampoline able to work via ssh+sudo. I'm just search for plugin, that implements same thing for vim. – datacompboy Nov 26 '11 at 17:08

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