sudo: cd: command not found

[t0p]

Looky here:

t0p@deimos:~$ cd /etc/chatscripts
bash: cd: /etc/chatscripts: Permission denied
t0p@deimos:~$ sudo cd /etc/chatscripts
[sudo] password for t0p: 
sudo: cd: command not found
t0p@deimos:~$ sudo -s
root@deimos:~# cd /etc/chatscripts
root@deimos:/etc/chatscripts#

How come 'sudo cd' doesn't work?

[ibuclaw]

cd isn't a command.

It's a builtin.

Type in

help

For a list of other builtins that won't work with sudo.

[t0p]

Thanks.

Tell you what though, that does seem to be a bit of a boo boo. Ubuntu encourages use of sudo rather than logging in as root. Yet sudo will not work with these builtins.

Why won't sudo work with builtins? Actually, that should read as: Why don't the writers of sudo want it to work with builtins?

[sisco311]

Thanks.

Tell you what though, that does seem to be a bit of a boo boo. Ubuntu encourages use of sudo rather than logging in as root. Yet sudo will not work with these builtins.

Why won't sudo work with builtins? Actually, that should read as: Why don't the writers of sudo want it to work with builtins?

Exactly what would you expect from sudo cd /root?

[lisati]

Exactly what would you expect from sudo cd /root?

+1
I would have thought that ordinairily something like sudo cd ... wouldn't be necessary.

[az]

Thanks.

Tell you what though, that does seem to be a bit of a boo boo. Ubuntu encourages use of sudo rather than logging in as root. Yet sudo will not work with these builtins.

Why won't sudo work with builtins? Actually, that should read as: Why don't the writers of sudo want it to work with builtins?

As your user, you cannot change into that directory. As root you can. Using sudo, you escalate your privileges to be able to do that, but once that command finishes, you are back to your regular privileges. But as your user with regular privileges you are not allowed to cd there...

The current behavior is correct.

[shylent]

Actually it should read like this: when you do "sudo <whatever>" you are launching an *executable* called " whatever" as another user (that's what sudo does anyway). However, "cd" is not an executable - it is a built-in shell command. You are NOT launching an executable, you are telling the shell to perform some action, in this case, change the current working directory -> not the same thing! Try "help" - you will see some more of those built-ins.

Anyway, you don't need to log in as root at all. You know, that you can do "sudo sh" to get into a root shell (again, not the same thing as logging in as root at all), right?

[sisco311]

Well, you can run bult-in commands with sudo

[sisco@acme xtmp]$ pwd  # admin user
/home/sisco/xtmp
[sisco@acme xtmp]$ sudo -i cd /root  # as root cd to /root
[sisco@acme xtmp]$ pwd  # admin user
/home/sisco/xtmp

[lisati]

cd isn't a command.

It's a builtin.

In MS-DOS-speak, it's a built-in command, not an external command.

[g000we]

Hey,

Try

$sudo su -

cd command your way back to the desired location, and then cd to the directory of want.

When finished ruining/fixing the system, type "su {username}" to return to your user (without root privileges, where {username} is the username).

g000we