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bashshellscriptingpermissionssudo

sudo echo "something" >> /etc/privilegedFile doesn't work


This is a pretty simple question, at least it seems like it should be, about sudo permissions in Linux.

There are a lot of times when I just want to append something to /etc/hosts or a similar file but end up not being able to because both > and >> are not allowed, even with root.

Is there someway to make this work without having to su or sudo su into root?


Solution

  • Use tee --append or tee -a.

    echo 'deb blah ... blah' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
    

    Make sure to avoid quotes inside quotes.

    To avoid printing data back to the console, redirect the output to /dev/null.

    echo 'deb blah ... blah' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list > /dev/null
    

    Remember about the (-a/--append) flag! Just tee works like > and will overwrite your file. tee -a works like >> and will write at the end of the file.