bash path completion with sudo

[alex.blackbit]

Hi,

I only open a root shell in case of an emergency.
Normally I do admin stuff with sudo.
Unfortunately tab completion for paths does not work with sudo when accessing directories that the normal user does not have 'r' permission for.

[eccerr0r]

Of course it's a security hole if it did work.

But if you want to punch a hole, an idea is to make your user be a part of that directory's group and give read permissions that group (and none for others).
_________________
Core-i7-2700K@4.1GHz/8GB RAM/180GB SSD/Intel HD3000 graphics
What the heck am I advocating?

[mv]

A possibility could be to let the sudo completion call sudo for completion. Whether this is useful depends on your sudo configuration (e.g. can your user get full root access at all or only for special commands?). If you need it only for particular commands (which probably is the case), I would handcraft a special solution for that case(s). Overriding the default sudo completion (and calling the original as a fallback if the command line does not match your special case(s)) is trivial in zsh, probably not so simple in bash. (Oh, did I forget to say as usual that I recommend zsh for interactive usage?)