On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 10:23 PM, Don Juan <donjuansjiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > But if you are USER root you don't need to run sudo, so hence wouldn't running EDITOR=nano visudo > not work if you are a root user, since sudo is not involved? visudo uses the EDITOR / VISUAL vars, see the man page: ENVIRONMENT The following environment variables may be consulted depending on the value of the editor and env_editor sudoers variables: VISUAL Invoked by visudo as the editor to use EDITOR Used by visudo if VISUAL is not set See, these variables are used *by visudo*. As you said, sudo is needed only for the user, otherwise I get 'visudo: /etc/sudoers: Permission denied'.