redirecting out of a command invoked by sudo fails

[Bill Crawford]

On 25 June 2010 19:38, JD <jd1008 at gmail.com> wrote:
> cd /var/lib
> sudo tar cjf - rpm > rpm.tar.bz2
> sh: rpm.tar.bz2: cannot create [Permission denied]
>
> My username is in /etc/sudoers:
> jd      ALL=(ALL)       NOPASSWD: ALL
>
> Yeah... I know it is not safe to set NOPASSWD and all that...
> but that is not why I am asking about.
>
> Is this an established legacy behaviour of sudo?

Nope. Just that sudo only runs the "tar" command; the redirect (>) is
done by the shell, and since you aren't root, you can't write in
/var/lib.

Suggest "sudo tar cjf rpm.tar.bz2 rpm" (have tar write the file
itself; it will be running as root so will work).