Extending sudo credentials

If you use sudo for, e.g. pkgsrc's just-in-time su, you may have often bitten by the problem that some compilations are slow and the build process stops right in the middle to ask you for a root password. If you go away while the system compiles, you'll be frustrated when you come back, as the process may still well be at the very beginning.

This happens because, unless disabled by the system administrator, your sudo credentials last for 5 minutes. If you hadn't used sudo for those 5 minutes, it will ask you for your password again. A simple workaround for the problem is to automatically renew your credentials, say, every 2 minutes. You can do this by running the following command (from the same console you are using later on!) right before starting a pkgsrc build:

$ ( while :; do sudo -v; sleep 120; done ) &

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