How to get the long 'less' prompt with sudo?

Question

I have added the following to my user's .bashrc file to get a longer prompt in less:

export LESS="-M"

This is added to the root user's .bashrc file as well, so when I sudo bash to get a root shell, it works just as well.

But when using sudo less …, it doesn't apply. There's only the simple colon prompt giving me no information at all where I am in the file. How can I change that?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 20 '16 at 21:22

3

You should keep this environmental variable when running sudo. Edit the file /etc/sudoers and add

Defaults        env_keep += "LESS"

answered Sep 20 '16 at 21:22

xuhdev

165

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

0

You need to be using aliases in your .bashrc file not export. You need to be editing your /etc/bash.bashrc file to inclide,

 alias less="sudo less -m"

How to get the long 'less' prompt with sudo?

2 Answers2