sudo echo "something" >> /etc/privilegedFile doesn't work

Use tee --append or tee -a.

echo 'deb blah ... blah' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

Make sure to avoid quotes inside quotes.

To avoid printing data back to the console, redirect the output to /dev/null.

echo 'deb blah ... blah' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list > /dev/null

Remember about the (-a/--append) flag! Just tee works like > and will overwrite your file. tee -a works like >> and will write at the end of the file.

The problem is that the shell does output redirection, not sudo or echo, so this is being done as your regular user.

Try the following code snippet:

sudo sh -c "echo 'something' >> /etc/privilegedfile"

The issue is that it's your shell that handles redirection; it's trying to open the file with your permissions not those of the process you're running under sudo.

Use something like this, perhaps:

sudo sh -c "echo 'something' >> /etc/privilegedFile"

sudo sh -c "echo 127.0.0.1 localhost >> /etc/hosts"

Doing

sudo sh -c "echo >> somefile"

should work. The problem is that > and >> are handled by your shell, not by the "sudoed" command, so the permissions are your ones, not the ones of the user you are "sudoing" into.

Some user not know solution when using multiples lines.

sudo tee -a  /path/file/to/create_with_text > /dev/null <<EOT 
line 1
line 2
line 3
EOT

You can also use sponge from the moreutils package and not need to redirect the output (i.e., no tee noise to hide):

echo 'Add this line' | sudo sponge -a privfile

By using sed -i with $ a , you can append text, containing both variables and special characters, after the last line.

For example, adding $NEW_HOST with $NEW_IP to /etc/hosts:

sudo sed -i "\$ a $NEW_IP\t\t$NEW_HOST.domain.local\t$NEW_HOST" /etc/hosts

sed options explained:

• -i for in-place
• $ for last line
• a for append

echo 'Hello World' | (sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list)

How about:
echo text | sudo dd status=none of=privilegedfile
I want to change /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_rmem.
I did:
sudo dd status=none of=/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_rmem <<<"4096 131072 1024000"
eliminates the echo with a single line document