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

[Jonathan Groll <lists@groll.co.za>]

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.