Extension seems to unnecessarily checks if it has "sudo" access

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
azure, python
Domain
cloud, devops

Research direction

Start by reading EnvHealthManager.check_sudo_status and the code path that hardcodes raise_if_not_sudo to True. Review the LinuxPatchExtension and waagent configuration references mentioned in the issue, then determine a supported configuration path and verify that installation can skip the sudoers validation when disabled without breaking the default behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Based on public docs everything the waagent runs, including VM extensions, are executed as root: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/extensions/features-linux?tabs=azure-cli#agent-permissions

I checked the source code and found the method EnvHealthManager.check_sudo_status that basically runs a "sudo id" command and checks if it gets a prompt for root password ("[sudo] password for username"). If so, the error "Sudo status check failed..." is raised and LinuxPatchExtension installation fails. Why?

I see there is an argument named raise_if_not_sudo that can skip /etc/sudoers validation, but it is hardcoded to "True" and I did not find anyway to replace it to False without manually changing extension binary.

Is it possible to add a setting in the waagent or LinuxPatchExtension config file to change this raise_if_not_sudo to False? I did not find anyway to do it without manually changing extension binary. The EXT will be executed as root, so why this is set to True? Is there any scenario the EXT does not run as root?

Dominant language
Python
Stars
12
Forks
20
Avg merge
3d 2h
Merged PRs (30d)
2

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