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ygoe
Asked: 2014-12-08 11:19:20 +0800 CST

How to get the long 'less' prompt with sudo?

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I have added the following to my user's .bashrc file to get a longer prompt in less:

export LESS="-M"

This is added to the root user's .bashrc file as well, so when I sudo bash to get a root shell, it works just as well.

But when using sudo less …, it doesn't apply. There's only the simple colon prompt giving me no information at all where I am in the file. How can I change that?

sudo

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You should keep this environmental variable when running sudo. Edit the file /etc/sudoers and add

    Defaults        env_keep += "LESS"
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  2. You need to be using aliases in your .bashrc file not export. You need to be editing your /etc/bash.bashrc file to inclide, 

     alias less="sudo less -m"

    more info from this POST

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