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How to Solve “Permission Denied” When Using Sudo With Redirection in Bash?

bashcommand linesudo

When using sudo to allow edits to files, I regularly get ‘permission denied’.

For example, my mouse is jittery and sluggish, so I want to disable polling:

sudo echo "options drm_kms_helper poll=N">/etc/modprobe.d/local.conf

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I’m prompted for a password, and then get:

bash: /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf: Permission denied

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So I tried to do a temporary change to disable polling by using:

sudo echo N> /sys/module/drm_kms_helper/parameters/poll

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Yet again the system responded with:

bash: /sys/module/drm_kms_helper/parameters/poll: Permission denied

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Any ideas?

Accepted Answer

Output redirection (via the > operator) is done by the shell, not by echo. You have to login as root

sudo -i

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Then you can use redirection

echo N> /sys/module/drm_kms_helper/parameters/poll

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Otherwise you can run bash string with sudo

sudo bash -c "echo N> /sys/module/drm_kms_helper/parameters/poll"

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