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Accepted
Gok Demir
Asked: 2010-05-14 07:52:50 +0800 CST

Bash Completion Problem with sudo on Ubuntu VPS

  • 772

I have a VPS from Linode. I deployed Ubuntu 10.04 server. I added a user and put it sudoers file. when I write as a user

apti <TAB>

it comletes with tab to

aptitude <TAB>

but when I continue to

aptitude upd <TAB>

it didnt complete but on my desktop it works great. Even worse if I try same command with sudo

sudo apti <TAB>

does not work I checked .basrc, .profile/.bashrc and /etc/bash.basrc files and none of them were commented out so what is wrong. By the way when I root it works

mine ~/bashrc

if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ] && ! shopt -oq posix; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi
bash sudo vps

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    When I got my Linode (Jaunty) I had to install bash-completion. Give that a go.

    • 5

  2. You should have something like this in your ~/.bashrc:

    # enable programmable completion features (you don't need to enable
# this, if it's already enabled in /etc/bash.bashrc and /etc/profile
# sources /etc/bash.bashrc).
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi

    What do you mean "they are all commented out"? It's possible that something you need is commented out and that's causing your problem.

    • 2

  3. You may also want to add the line "complete -cf sudo" to your ~/.bashrc file. This will allow bash to search for commands after sudo rather than searching for files in the current directory. I do the same with a lot of other commands too such as man and which.

    • 2

  4. Check you don't have commented these lines out

    if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi

    once in your ~/.bashrc file (probably ok) and once in the /root/.bashrc file where it is from unknown reasons commented out.

    • 1