Ubuntu 26.04's sudo-rs Echoes Asterisks and Still Lacks sudo -E, With a Wontfix on Both Fronts

Ubuntu 26.04 ships sudo-rs 0.2.12-0ubuntu1, a Rust rewrite of sudo, and two behaviours differ from the sudo most admins have typed for decades: it prints an asterisk for every character of a password, and plain sudo -E does not work. Neither has a change queued in the threads. Launchpad bug 2142721 on the asterisks was closed Won't Fix on Feb. 26, and a request for -E carries a wontfix label at the sudo-rs project.

The stakes rise with 26.10. A post on Ubuntu Discourse, which began as the Sept. 2, 2025 announcement that sudo-rs 0.2.8 was the default in 25.10 daily images, says the plan is for sudo-rs to be the only sudo provider in the main archive in 26.10.

The asterisk bug, and the one-line fix

The Launchpad report, from a user named Mystica555, describes upgrading to sudo-rs 0.2.12-0ubuntu1 and seeing asterisks where the old sudo echoed nothing. They called it a security regression, because anyone watching the screen now sees the password's length. Simon Johnsson, replying on the bug, called it intended and marked it Won't Fix, adding that the way back is Defaults !pwfeedback via visudo.

The thread is worth reading for the argument rather than the verdict. Julian Andres Klode wrote that upgraded machines should behave like new installs so fleets stay consistent, and rejected the idea of printing two or three asterisks per keystroke, citing sticky-key and double-keypress problems. Seth Arnold argued that password length should not matter to security, and that if it does, the password is too short or the key derivation too weak. Johnsson then filed wishlist bug 2142864 on the sudo-common package.

For anyone who shares a screen, the default changed on upgrade. Staying silent needs a sudoers edit on every machine.

sudo -E: the request that CI runners filed

The -E flag preserves the caller's whole environment. In sudo-rs issue 1299, opened Oct. 10, 2025 by a user named bk2204, the reporter listed Git's CI tests, SSH and GnuPG agent sockets, display and D-Bus access, and GitHub Codespaces. Commenters added snap tooling, MicroK8s and provisioning scripts.

Maintainer squell wrote that the original sudo's -E disables env_reset, while sudo-rs always enforces it. Collaborator rnijveld argued against, suggesting env_keep with wildcards and warning that a preserve-most-of-it mode would likely become permanent. Collaborator bjorn3 wrote that --preserve-env=VAR, with a named variable, already works since pull request 1167. The issue is open, labelled both enhancement and wontfix.

What else the Discourse post lists as missing

Feature	Status per Ubuntu Discourse post
I/O logging and sudoreplay	Not supported
sendmail support	Not included
--askpass	Not yet supported, which breaks Cockpit
LDAP via sudoers.ldap	Absent; sudo-ldap package removed from 25.10

The same post gives an escape hatch, which it labels not recommended: update-alternatives --set sudo /usr/bin/sudo.ws, with /usr/lib/cargo/bin/sudo as the way back to sudo-rs. That route has a shelf life if 26.10 drops the original from main.

Similar trade-offs about who gets a say in a Rust project show up in Rune's no-pull-request policy, and the cost of privilege tooling going wrong is the subject of CISA's PHP2Shell and Fragnesia advisory. The date to watch is the 26.10 archive decision, the point at which the Discourse post says sudo.ws leaves the main archive.