'Retry As Sudo' doesn't work to save a file

[lord-soth]

• VSCode Version: 1.32.1
• OS Version: Arch Linux 5.0.0-arch1-1-ARCH

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open and edit a file with root write permission
2. Try to save it

When I try to edit and save a file with root permissions a prompt appears saying Failed to save httpd.conf. Insufficient permissions. Select Retry as Sudo to retry as superuser. When I click Retry as Sudo button same prompt reappears and file isn't saved. Prompt reappears every time I click the button.

I don't know if its relevant but I edited my sudoers file so sudo doesn't ask me for password:
alp ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes

[vscodebot]

(Experimental duplicate detection)
Thanks for submitting this issue. Please also check if it is already covered by an existing one, like:

• Ignore dirty flag and do not attempt saving files for read-only FileSystemProvider (#53257)

[lord-soth]

File is not read-only and is writeable by root so that issue is not relevant.

[bpasero]

@lord-soth does it work if you do not do that?

I don't know if its relevant but I edited my sudoers file so sudo doesn't ask me for password:
alp ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

[lord-soth]

@bpasero It doesn't work also if I change it to:
alp ALL=(ALL) ALL

I can save if I start VSCode with superuser privilages but that is expected.

[bpasero]

@lord-soth can you see if something is printed to the console when this happens? You can see output when you run with "code --verbose" and open the developer tools from the help menu

@jorangreef any hints what this could be? We are still using sudo-prompt module.

[lord-soth]

@bpasero I think the relevant part is:

ERR doSave(4) - exit - resulted in a save error: Error: Permission denied writing to file (file:///etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf) g {scheme: "file", authority: "", path: "/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf", query: "", fragment: "", …}authority: ""fragment: ""path: "/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf"query: ""scheme: "file"_formatted: "file:///etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf"_fsPath: "/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf"fsPath: (...)proto: u

Failed to save 'httpd.conf': Insufficient permissions. Select 'Retry as Sudo' to retry as superuser.

onDidNotificationChange	@	notificationsAlerts.ts:40
	_register.model.onDidNotificationChange.e	@
	fire	@
	notify	@
	notify	@
	onSaveError	@
	onSaveError	@
	i.force.dirty.inOrphanMode.i.reason.e.saveSequentializer.setPending.fileService.updateContent.then.e	@
	Promise.then (async)
	saveSequentializer.setPending.n.then.e	@
	_tickCallback	@
	Promise.then (async)
	doSave	@
	save	@
	Promise.all.i.map.e	@
	doSaveAllFiles	@
	doSaveAll	@
	saveAll	@
	save	@
	P	@
	handler	@
	invokeFunction	@
	_tryExecuteCommand	@
	r.then.i	@
	Promise.then (async)
	executeCommand	@
	y.ipcRenderer.on	@
	emit

[bpasero]

@lord-soth yeah that is the first part of the error which is to be expected because this triggers the prompt to save as admin.

I you are up to it, can you try to reproduce just using the https://github.com/jorangreef/sudo-prompt module? This is what VSCode is using after all.

[lord-soth]

@bpasero I checked that the sudo-prompt node package is not installed so I installed it.

code $ sudo npm install -g sudo-prompt
+ sudo-prompt@8.2.5
added 1 package from 1 contributor in 0.648s

I executed test.js provided by sudo-prompt package to make sure sudo-prompt works correctly. Password prompt appeared and I entered my password. It seems to work.

sudo-prompt $ node test.js
sudo.exec("echo hello", {"name":"Electron"})
error: null
stdout: "hello\n"
stderr: ""
OK

I executed npm install in VSCode directory to make sure dependencies are installed.

code $ ls
code.js     LICENSE.txt        node_modules.asar.unpacked  package.json       product.json  ThirdPartyNotices.txt
extensions  node_modules.asar  out                         package-lock.json  resources
code $ npm install
npm WARN Invalid name: "Code - OSS"
npm WARN code No description
npm WARN code No repository field.
npm WARN code No README data
npm WARN code No license field.

up to date in 1.031s
found 0 vulnerabilities

However there is no change in VSCode. I don't know how VSCode uses sudo-prompt so I can't investigate the issue. Also I have no experience with NodeJs or Electron so I don't think I can debug by myself.

[bpasero]

@lord-soth ok, there is more things we can try. If you tell VSCode to save as sudo, the following will happen:

• we write the desired contents into a temp file (here)
• we import sudo-prompt (here)
• we ask it to run "code --file-write tmpfile target"

It is possible that this fails, maybe you could change your script to exercise the same things?

[lord-soth]

@bpasero I don't have the time and don't have the java/js experience(I am a c++ dev) to debug this but if you give me a script/executable to run I can try. Maybe in the near future I can try to debug.

[jorangreef]

Thanks @lord-soth for running the sudo-prompt test.

If that passes, then I don't think it's anything specific to your Arch Linux system or your sudoers file.

@bpasero , thanks for the heads up. I will keep tabs on this and will still look into the fileService.ts references you posted to see if I can find anything.

[bpasero]

@lord-soth in your script, just try this:

sudo.exec("code --file-write <some existing file> <some new file>", {"name":"Code"})

And see if that works or throws an error.

@jorangreef thanks, I would assume this is probably specific to @lord-soth configuration as I have not heard any issues from any other users so far.

[lord-soth]

@bpasero

scripts $ node test.js
/home/alp/scripts/test.js:1
sudo.exec("code --file-write /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf /home/alp/scripts/test", {"name":"Code"});
^

ReferenceError: sudo is not defined
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/alp/scripts/test.js:1:1)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:799:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:810:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:666:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:606:12)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:598:3)
    at Function.Module.runMain (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:862:12)
    at internal/main/run_main_module.js:21:11