sudo: unable to lookup ubuntu510 via gethostbyname()
…yeah, sudo, it’s all very clever until someone loses an eye!
I have a bunch of entries in /etc/hosts because of having four local systems plus a bunch of VMware machines etc. So now when I set up a new VMware machine I just copy the /etc/hosts from the real machine over to the VM then edit a couple of lines to match the VM, instead of re-editing it all from scratch. Only, as you can see, this utterly breaks Ubuntu…all I need to do to fix the sudo problem is edit /etc/hosts so 127.0.0.1 is ‘ubuntu510′ (the name of the VM) rather than ‘zen’ (the name of the real machine), but I can’t do it, because sudo doesn’t work…
the only way out of this that I can see is single-user mode or the recovery console. Not too smart! Surely sudo shouldn’t ABSOLUTELY NEED to look up the host it’s running on?
If you consider that this is relevant and worth discussing, we can add Adam Williamson to the conversation. Otherwise, just mark it as invalid and forget it.
On behalf of Adam Williamson [*]
adamw@ubuntu510:~$ sudo scp 192.168. 2.7:/etc/ hosts /etc
adamw@ubuntu510:~$ sudo nano /etc/hosts
sudo: unable to lookup ubuntu510 via gethostbyname()
…yeah, sudo, it’s all very clever until someone loses an eye!
I have a bunch of entries in /etc/hosts because of having four local systems plus a bunch of VMware machines etc. So now when I set up a new VMware machine I just copy the /etc/hosts from the real machine over to the VM then edit a couple of lines to match the VM, instead of re-editing it all from scratch. Only, as you can see, this utterly breaks Ubuntu…all I need to do to fix the sudo problem is edit /etc/hosts so 127.0.0.1 is ‘ubuntu510′ (the name of the VM) rather than ‘zen’ (the name of the real machine), but I can’t do it, because sudo doesn’t work…
the only way out of this that I can see is single-user mode or the recovery console. Not too smart! Surely sudo shouldn’t ABSOLUTELY NEED to look up the host it’s running on?
[*] Originally from http:// www.happyassass in.net/ 2006/02/ 24/how- to-break- ubuntu- in-thirty- seconds/,
If you consider that this is relevant and worth discussing, we can add Adam Williamson to the conversation. Otherwise, just mark it as invalid and forget it.