Re: Tramp multi-hop on localhost: su:sudo

[Jonathan Groll]

On Sun, Jun 07, 2009 at 06:54:48PM +0200, Michael Albinus wrote:
> Jonathan Groll <lists@groll.co.za> writes:
>
> > On OS X  (perhaps not unwarranted) I'm too afraid to let my regular
> > user have sudo rights, so if I want to edit a file as root, I need to
> > first su to another user account (that is in the sudoers file) and
> > then sudo to root.
> >
> > All works well except for tramp. I can su and edit files that belong
> > to another user, but still haven't worked out how to get multihop to
> > the root user working.
> >
> > I've read the manual, on other hosts I can use tramp multihop to first
> > ssh into another host and then sudo to root (eg. ubuntu boxes), but
> > still haven't managed to get the > su> sudo hop working on my mac.
> >
> > How do I do this? Is it possible even on the localhost?
>
> I would do (untested)
>
>     (add-to-list 'tramp-default-proxies-alist
>                  '("\\`localhost\\'" "\\`root\\'" "/su:otheruser@%h:"))
>
> Then you can apply "C-x C-f /sudo:root@localhost:".

Wow! It worked! I didn't have to 'weaken' the security of my
system. Tramp is truly wonderful.

Only one odd thing - even though I'd already established a tramp
session as:
/su:otheruser@localhost:

When I opened my first buffer using "C-x C-f /sudo:root@localhost:"
(from an active buffer 'owned' by otheruser) it seemed to ask for
otheruser's password again, i.e. it first asked for a password for
/su:otheruser@localhost: and then it asked for a password for:
/sudo:root@localhost:

So in total I ended up entering the password for otheruser 3 times -
it seems like my first tramp session as 'otheruser' did not get
"reused". I presume the above is because of the proxy also getting a
tramp session?

Thank you and regards,
Jonathan.