sudo permission denied

Question

I ran this code:

sudo cat <<EOF | sudo sed -e "s,%,$,g" >/etc/init.d/dropbox
  echo "Hello World"
EOF

But even though, I get "permission denied", cause you have to be root to make changes in the /etc/init.d directory. And somehow, my command above doesn't work.

Is there a way to solve this?

Solution 1

The redirection to a file is handled by bash. It does therefore not inherit permissions granted by sudo.

Use sudo tee for writing to a file as root.

Try this:

cat | sed -e 's,%,$,g' | sudo tee /etc/init.d/dropbox << EOF
  echo "Hello World"
EOF

Notice that $, inside double quotes might be interpreted.

Solution 2

You could grant yourself persistent su-rights with
# sudo -s

then your command (do not need to sudo anymore) and exit with
# exit

EDIT:
I assume you're asking Ubuntu-related because your question is tagged with that. In other distribution like Suse you'll have the ability to use
# su
instead of # sudo -s

Comments

[Chetan]

Or get persistent su-rights with just su.

[MOnsDaR]

@Chetan: This does not work in Ubuntu. (The question is tagged with Ubuntu, so I expect that it was in this consense)

[8k_of_power]

sorry, I forgot to mention that this is in a script so I can't do sudo to run it.

[8k_of_power]

It still gives me "Permission denied".

[MOnsDaR]

If its in a script you could start the script with sudo as far as I know: # sudo ./myScript

[8k_of_power]

Thanks for the description of the problem. But how do I solve it?

[Benoit]

I have edited the answer. use sudo tee rather.

[8k_of_power]

But since it's a script I cannot use sudo -s inside the script cause the lines after it won't run.