How to write to files that require super user rights?

[kirusfg]

When editing a file that does not belong to me, I do sudo helix file so that I have rights to write to it, but the config loaded in helix is no longer mine. Is there a way to "sudo-write" from a user instance of helix?

[the-mikedavis]

sudoedit(8) is a good tool for this: instead of running sudo helix which runs helix with root permissions, it creates a temp file, runs helix as you, and then moves the temp file to the location of the real file when done editing.

[David-Else]

Maybe a better solution would be to make Helix aware if it was called as SUDO_EDITOR and simply display in the status line 'You don't have permission to modify this file' if that were the case?

[sudormrfbin]

Upon loading a new document we could check whether the current user has write permissions to the file and disable editing. Vim for example shows Warning: Editing a readonly file when attempting to change it (but still allows editing the text in the buffer).

[the-mikedavis]

A read-only indicator in the statusline would be a nice touch I think (#2627). Currently we only show an error when attempting to write to a read-only file.

[kirusfg]

I would personally prefer something like :sudo-write since that is what I use in vim and kakoune. But in those editors, these are plugins, not the editors' core functionality.

[yonatan8070]

I know that VS Code has a similar feature, if you try to save a file without write permissions, it will offer to save as root (using pkexec), save to a different location, or discard. I think this could be a really useful feature.

[David-Else]

To make helix your default sudo editor edit your .bash_profile and add:

export SUDO_EDITOR="path/to/hx"

Then use sudoedit.

[pwnspirit]

same as

export SUDO_EDITOR=$(which hx) 

and sudoedit

[pathwave]

When you run helix as sudo helix look for config in root/.config/helix/.. path. You can supply your own config path by doing hx --config /my/path/config.toml or symlink config to root profile folder.

Another option is to do what installers do and make a bash script in for example /usr/bin/ named hx, with content like this:
#!/bin/sh
HELIX_RUNTIME=/path/to/helix/runtime exec /path/to/real/helix/hx --config /path/to/helix/config.toml "$@"

[fraunos]

micro editor asks for root password when the user is not permitted to write the file. This is really convenient.

[zhexyez]

micro editor asks for root password when the user is not permitted to write the file. This is really convenient.

Similar behavior would be appreciated, as SUDO_EDITOR does not warn that you want to write into the file that needs root permissions.

[uros-5]

If changing EDITOR and SUDO_EDITOR don't work, run this command:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/editor editor /home/username/.cargo/bin/hx 50

then select helix:

sudo update-alternatives --config editor

[uros-5]

Run which hx to see where is helix binary. And just replace output from that command into first one.

…

On Sat, Aug 5, 2023, 12:57 PM Hezhexi2002 ***@***.***> wrote: Sorry to bother you here,but I meet an error when I try to execute the command: sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/editor editor /home/username/.cargo/bin/hx 50 it throw an error like below: [image: image] <https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/53631206/258580017-a4667bf2-0e2c-42f7-bfc7-b0bcc5b7bd8c.png> and I also check the directory which used in the command and found that there does not have hx ,so I wonder if it exits only when you build the helix from source,hope you can give me more details — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4251 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOFFNVG5DYHBQCIZWU4WSK3XTYRJZANCNFSM6AAAAAAREJUWEU> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[nowhereman1999]

Sure, appreciate your prompt response. I've actually discovered that the helix binary is located at /usr/bin/hx, confirmed by using the which hx command. However, even after running the command with the updated path, the configuration didn't load when I tried opening it with sudo hx, as I explained in this post: link.

[HernandoR]

in vim, we could use :w !sudo tee % when we find out the requirement for sudo permission after editing. Is there a similar tool in hx?

[yonatan8070]

I think you can use %:pipe-to sudo tee %, haven't tested it but it should work

[jobukkit]

I think you can use %:pipe-to sudo tee %, haven't tested it but it should work

Didn't work for me, there was no error but the changes weren't written. Don't know if I did something wrong.

[curiositry]

@yonatan8070 @jobukkit %:pipe-to sudo tee % seems to write the current file to a file named %. What I used was %:pipe-to sudo tee <C-r>% (ctrl+r % outputs the current file path from the % register when in command mode.)

[nothingnesses]

For posterity, the solution by @curiositry works, but be very careful that you do this properly, in case you end up doing what I did: I forgot to select all the text using "%" before using pipe-to and didn't realise until after I had saved my NixOS configuration and closed the editor. As you can guess by now, this ended up writing an empty file. Unfortunately, I had no recent backups, the configs weren't in VCS, ext4 doesn't have a snapshot/rollback feature and I had recently GC'ed "/nix/store". I spent almost a whole day to recover the file contents, which thankfully I was able to do. I've since learnt my lesson and am now keeping my config in VCS + I keep regular backups.

That being said, this operation (saving a file as superuser) really should be much easier to do, perhaps added as a built-in command like pipe-to, instead of having to rely solely on the user to correctly invoke a sequence of commands, which can easily be mistyped. micro handles this very cleanly: when trying to save a file without superuser access, the program will prompt the user for a password to escalate their privilege. Despite how much I like the rest of the editor, I don't understand why hx still doesn't do something similar after all this time.

[htqx]

....Not as good as micro