The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Be careful what you do: blindly following Super User can make sudo unavailable: [WayBack] linux – Keeping the fancy sudo warning forever – Super User.

Following the answer archived in the WayBack machine gets you into this situation:

sudo -i
>>> /etc/sudoers.d/privacy: syntax error near line 1 <<<
sudo: parse error in /etc/sudoers.d/privacy near line 1
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting
sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

The cause:

I forgot to put a line terminator at the end of the line in the privacy file.

If you do that, then it works fine: add this line INCLUDING A LINE TERMINATOR to /etc/sudoers.d/privacy (any file in that directory will do):

Default lecture=always

Related

• “We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System” – Google Search
• [WayBack] Terminal welcoming message – Ask Fedora: Community Knowledge Base and Support Forum
• [WayBack] linux – Keeping the fancy sudo warning forever – Super User
  

  The first time I do sudo on openSUSE I’m always warned with a someway fancy message

  We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
  Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:
  
      #1) Respect the privacy of others.
      #2) Think before you type.
      #3) With great power comes great responsibility.
  
  root's password:
  

  After the first successful login I won’t be warned again.

  I’d like to be always warned. I find this message someway fancy. Is there any way to be warned like that by sudo prompt?

• [WayBack] linux – Changing the Sudo warning – Server Fault
  

  Happily, however, my man sudoers admits of the string lecture_file which it says is the

  [p]ath to a file containing an alternate sudo lecture that will be used in place of the standard lecture if the named file exists. By default, sudo uses a built-in lecture.

  So see if your sudo supports that, and if it does, set it to a particular filename with e.g.

  Defaults        lecture_file = /etc/sudoers.lecture
  

  and put your lecture text in that file. You may find this easier to test, as I did, if you also do

  Defaults        lecture = always
  

  which will display the lecture on every invocation of sudo. Otherwise you may run out of accounts which have never sudo’ed while you get this right!

–jeroen