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Temporarily make sudo passwordless (and undo it)¶

During a hands-on admin session — especially driving a machine over SSH with lots of root commands — retyping the sudo password every few minutes is painful. A quick NOPASSWD:ALL drop-in removes the prompt for the session; remove it when done.

🛑 Security risk. This lets any sudo run without a password. Only on a machine whose access is restricted and trusted, and always revert afterwards.

Make it passwordless¶

echo "$USER ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL" | sudo tee /etc/sudoers.d/99-$USER-nopasswd \
  && sudo chmod 440 /etc/sudoers.d/99-$USER-nopasswd \
  && sudo visudo -c

A drop-in under /etc/sudoers.d/ (never edit the main /etc/sudoers).
chmod 440 — sudo ignores the file if permissions are looser.
visudo -c validates all sudoers files; if it doesn't report OK, fix/remove the file before relying on it (a broken sudoers can lock you out).

Restore the password prompt¶

sudo rm /etc/sudoers.d/99-$USER-nopasswd

Verify which state you're in¶

sudo -n true && echo "passwordless is ACTIVE" || echo "password is required (restored)"

See also¶

For a permanent, command-scoped version — letting a specific script or command run without a password (e.g. a deploy script restarting nginx) rather than a blanket toggle — see Running a script without password.