alias or nano -B not working using sudo

Question

I have an alias set up

alias nano='nano -B'

in order to always make backups on change of files.

I did this in both /home/<USER>/.bashrc and in /root/.bashrc.

It works if I use

nano someFile

either as <USER> or root.

But when I use

sudo nano someFile

as <USER> backups are not made. (I'ld expect to find someFiles~ in the same folder)

Is there an additional .bashrc or something for sudo where I have to add this alias?

Possible duplicate of rm -i alias not working with sudo as root — pLumo, Nov 09 '17 at 12:51
https://askubuntu.com/questions/22037/aliases-not-available-when-using-sudo — pLumo, Nov 09 '17 at 12:53
Your user ID's aliases are not used via sudo ; You may or may not want to use the trick in the previous comments. There might be reasons to have no aliases or other aliases for root. — sudodus, Nov 09 '17 at 13:00
Yes but I thought those other aliases would be defined in /root/.bashrc — derHugo, Nov 09 '17 at 13:02
Yes, and they are used if you run sudo -i (and get the root prompt). — sudodus, Nov 09 '17 at 13:40
@sudodus I usually used sudo -i pressed Enter and did my stuff (e.g. nano ./.configFile) as root. Now that you mention it I tried to do just sudo -i nano /root/.configFile which works fine , too. Is it a good Idea than to use an alias as alias sudo='sudo -i' or speaks anything against this? — derHugo, Nov 09 '17 at 16:27

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Your user ID's aliases are not used via `sudo`

You may or may not want to use the trick linked to in the comments.
There might be reasons to have no aliases or other aliases for root.

These aliases can be stored in /root/.bashrc as you already know. They can be used when you run interactively at the root prompt # after
```
  sudo -i  # activates root's aliases
```

but they are not activated when followed by the alias on the command line

    sudo -i <specific alias>  # does not activate root's aliases
    sudo -H <specific alias>  # does not activate root's aliases

Examples:

$ LANG=C sudo -i
root@xenial32:~# alias
alias egrep='egrep --color=auto'
alias fgrep='fgrep --color=auto'
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
alias l='ls -CF'
alias la='ls -A'
alias ll='ls -alF'
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
root@xenial32:~# grep -e ^alias -e \ alias /root/.bashrc
enable color support of ls and also add handy aliases
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
alias fgrep='fgrep --color=auto'
alias egrep='egrep --color=auto'

some more ls aliases
alias ll='ls -alF'
alias la='ls -A'
alias l='ls -CF'

Using one of root's aliases

root@xenial32:~# l
bin@  extractor.log  logfile.tar  mkusb.log
root@xenial32:~# exit
logout
sudodus@xenial32 ~ $ LANG=C sudo -i l
-bash: l: command not found
[127] sudodus@xenial32 ~ $ LANG=C sudo -H l
sudo: l: command not found
[1] sudodus@xenial32 ~ $ LANG=C sudo -i alias
sudodus@xenial32 ~ $

I would not use `alias sudo='sudo -i'` because

there is a risk, that you forget that you have superuser privileges, and may do things that you should only do with regular privileges. In other words, I would say that it defeats the purpose of sudo to always go to root prompt
an alias does not work anyway on the command line with sudo -i <specific alias>
it is often efficient to use sudo with the standard settings for text mode commands
for GUI commands I would recommend sudo -H or gksudo

alias or nano -B not working using sudo

1 Answers1

Your user ID's aliases are not used via sudo

enable color support of ls and also add handy aliases

some more ls aliases

I would not use alias sudo='sudo -i' because

Your user ID's aliases are not used via `sudo`

I would not use `alias sudo='sudo -i'` because