Bug#1108550: reprotest: fails with "sudo: a remote host may only be specified when listing privileges"

[Marc Haber]

Good morning everybody,

sudo maintainer here.

On Mon, Jun 30, 2025 at 11:44:17PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
>reprotest has the following comment and code:
>
>  # -h localhost otherwise we get annoying messages about "can't resolve host"
>  # especially when doing the domain_host variation
>  SUDO = ['sudo', '-h', 'localhost']

For the record (from the man page):

| -h host, --host=host
|         Run the command on the specified host  if  the  security  policy
|         plugin  supports  remote  commands.  The sudoers plugin does not
|         currently support running remote commands. This may also be used
|         in conjunction with the -l option to list  a  user's  privileges
|         for the remote host.

That says that the -h host notation has two uses: To run a remote 
command (which is not supported by the suoders plugin anyway) and to 
list a user's privileges for the remote host.

I'd interpret this as reprotest's call sudo -h localhost using 
undocumented behavior.

I will talk to sudo upstream about this and report back.

Greetings
Marc

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