Terminal command with sudo takes a long time

Question

I noticed that the terminal recently becomes too slow when I execute a command that needs my password. It takes some seconds to display [sudo] password for ...

I'm using Dell XPS developer edition (i7,8G RAM) with Ubuntu 13.04 64bit.

Answer 1

Hi I found this answer on another question - The problem is if your hostname is not in your hosts file.

basically, type "hostname" in your terminal. That will tell you what your hostname is.

Next, type:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

and add:

127.0.0.1 yourhostname

then save - and you are done! Sudo should be fast now!

Answer 2

When you change your systems name in Gnome (The part that is displayed in the terminal after the @; e.g. tobias@laptop to tobias@newlaptop you might need to update your /etc/hosts:

127.0.1.1 laptop

needs to be changed to

127.0.1.1 newlaptop

If you get it right sudo should work without delay immediately after saving this setting.

Answer 3

Answer 1
Confirmed @Paul Preibisch answer for those who want more detailed answer

I had this issue for a long time and all I did was to run

hostnamectl | grep -i "static hostname"

this will show you your hostname then copy the value and edit your hosts

sudo vim /etc/hosts

and add 127.0.0.1 yourHostName to it
also in some distros 127.0.1.1 yourHostName should be replaced

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Answer 2
Please note that in many cases the answer 1 will solve your problem if it didn't you have to check your sudo log which in debian based distros is under
/var/log/auth.log
so you can watch your sudo log with tail command
sudo tail -f -n 100 /var/log/auth.log
then open another terminal and run a sudo command like:
sudo ls /
go back to your first terminal and read the log, in my case the problem was due to pam_krb5 authentication failure the log was:
sudo: pam_krb5(sudo:auth): authentication failure;
after I removed it sudo command worked instantly...

Thanks to @gdm for giving the clue...

Answer 4

For the lazy - Just copy paste this in your terminal :)

echo -e '127.0.0.1\t' $(hostnamectl | grep -i "static hostname:" | cut -f2- -d:) | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

sudo should be fast after you run this

Edit - Explaining this command in more detail:

• It first grabs your localhost cutting the label string ahead (hostnamectl | grep -i "static hostname:" | cut -f2- -d:) e.g. mylocalhost

• It concatenates it with 127.0.0.1 ahead ("\t" means tab character)

• It take the full string created above (127.0.0.1 mylocalhost) and adds it to the end of /etc/hosts (you need sudo to edit the hosts file)

Answer 5

I've been battling this issue for weeks, trying all sort of solutions found online which mostly pointed at the /etc/hosts file, without success.

Yesterday I decided to go through this again and, whilst at it, disable all my unnecessary services (using Debian here) and disabled "winbind" and "smbd", which in my case had no use.

this problem is now GONE.

Steps:

    sudo service --status-all
[...]
 [ + ]  smbd
 [ + ]  winbind
[...]
    $ sudo systemctl disable winbind smbd
    $ sudo service winbind status

○ winbind.service - Samba Winbind Daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/winbind.service; disabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
       Docs: man:winbindd(8)
             man:samba(7)
             man:smb.conf(5)


$ sudo service --status-all
[...]
[ - ]  smbd
[ - ]  winbind
[...]

I hope this helps!

Answer 6

For those who are still facing the problem of slow sudo, try commenting out your /etc/krb5.conf file.