How do I increase sudo password remember timeout?

Question

I already know that I need to tune /etc/sudoers file but I would like to see full information and also a solution that would not require me to use vi editor.

Update: never, ever try to edit the file with something else than visudo.

Answer 1

Run sudo visudo and add this line:

Defaults    timestamp_timeout=-1

See man 5 sudoers. -1 causes the password to never timeout. You may change the number to whatever you like in minutes.

The man page for sudo says that sudo -v "extends the sudo timeout for another 5 minutes".

Running 'sudo visudo' instead of editing the file directly causes the system to validate the sudoers file before it commits the changes. For instance, if you leave a stray character somwhere, when you save and exit, it will say "there is an error in the sudoers file, what would you like to do?" ... hence giving you a chance to go back in and edit. This actually just happened to me 10 minutes ago.

Answer 2

Be really careful about modifying /etc/sudoers directly!

For instance, I tried the above suggestion directly:

sudo sh -c 'echo "\nDefaults timestamp_timeout=-1">>/etc/sudoers'

which messed up my /etc/sudoers file (on a CentOS Virtualbox VM). Should have been:

sudo sh -c 'echo -e "\nDefaults timestamp_timeout=-1">>/etc/sudoers'

Fortunately, I had access to the root account, logged in as root, used visudo and repaired the problem! So, I agree w/ the above comments to use visudo instead.

Answer 3

All information for sudoers can be found from the terminal with the command

man sudoers

You can even user simple text to edit files, however the privs make that difficult. sudoers is -r--r----- (Octal 0440)

This indicates that Apple really doesn't want you messing with the file. This really is the core security of the OS.

Options for editing are vi, emacs, or my personal favourite BBEdit.

Answer 4

Disable sudo timeout with this command:

sudo sh -c 'echo "\nDefaults timestamp_timeout=-1">>/etc/sudoers'

To re-enable sudo timeout with this method:

sudo sed -i "/Defaults timestamp_timeout=-1/d" /etc/sudoers