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Make sudo stop asking for a password

When I run Ubuntu Linux under WSL on my desktop, I do not want to input sudo password when I require elevated user access rights. I still would like to use sudo though to separate user and admin level activities.

Procedure

Instead of amending the default sudo configuration in /etc/sudoers, I create a new file containing only overrides. My login, naturally, is ofr.

First, make an empty file.

$ sudo touch /etc/sudoers.d/10-ofr

Then, populate it with the overrides.

# This is /etc/sudoers.d/10-ofr
# Do not lecture me or ask for a password when using sudo

Defaults:ofr    !lecture
Defaults:ofr    !authenticate

Set strict permissions on the overrides file. The permissions match those of an example file in the same directory.

$ sudo chmod 440 /etc/sudoers.d/10-ofr

Test

# Clear cached password, in case there was any
$ sudo -k

# Run a command which requires elevated access rights
$ sudo apt update

It worked!

More Information

I found sudoers(7) rather dry and unhelpful, apart from the Examples section.

— Oliver Frolovs, 2020