"Command not found" while using sudo with nano

Question

I got a problem when I want to edit files using nano with sudo. When I enter the following command:

sudo nano /etc/exports

I got this error

sudo: nano: command not found

This is the return from echo $PATH:

/home/einzelkind/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games:/usr/lib/mit/bin:/usr/local/sbin

I installed nano like this:

1. Download the package with wget https://nano-editor.org/dist/
2. extract the files with tar -xvJf
3. ./configure --enable-utf8 --enable-nanorc
4. sudo make
5. sudo make install

Nano is installed in /usr/local/bin.

How to solve this problem?

Solution

Is /usr/local/bin in your $PATH? Anyway,

sudo /usr/local/bin/nano

should always work, no matter how $PATH is configured.

Comments

[ganesh]

Also see superuser.com/questions/927512/…

[Einzelkind]

sudo /usr/local/bin/nano works! thank you!

[Kamil Maciorowski]

Your link is useful but the command sudo echo $PATH is not. The shell expands $PATH first, then sudo gets its value.

[Votar]

Well, that's good to know. Thanks @KamilMaciorowski. So I guess the way to find the PATH for root would be to su first and then echo $PATH, hm? Anyway, as @jvb suggested - running with absolute path will suffice.