Running VS Code with the root privileges not work anymore in ubuntu linux

best way (recommended):

just use this : sudo code "your-directory" --user-data-dir='.' --no-sandbox

for example to open /etc/nginx/nginx.conf, use:

sudo code /etc/nginx/nginx.conf --user-data-dir='.' --no-sandbox

vscode will create files where you open terminal because of : --user-data-dir='.'

another way (not recommended):

use sudo chmod -R 777

But it will give the full access of your project directory to all users on the machine

You can use chown on the project directory to own it only for yourself

cd /location
sudo chown your_username your_project_directory

Example:

let's say I have a directory called project1 in my /var/opt location and my user name is tom.

cd /var/opt
sudo chown tom project1

I had the same problem

sudo code myfile stopped working sometime in July/August 2021

I use VS Code as my standard code/text editor and that includes editing different system config files where I need root privileges to edit.

A simple way to fix this problem is to add an alias in the config-file for your terminal. (~/.bashrc if you have bash as your shell)

I call the alias "sucode"

alias sucode='sudo code $1 --user-data-dir='"'"'/root/.config/Code - OSS/'"'"' --no-sandbox'

Save the file and restart your shell (source ~/.bashrc) and from now on you enter sucode myfile instead of sudo code myfile whenever you need to edit a text file with root privileges.

Please note the path to the root account's user data folder for VS Code.

On my Arch-system the folder where VS Code stores it's user data is called "Code - OSS" and for the root account the complete path to this folder is:

/root/.config/Code - OSS/

It's good to check to see if your installation of VS Code has the same path. If it hasn't, you have to modify the alias-command accordingly.

In my opinion it's not such a great idea to specify the user-data-dir as the dot-folder (".") because then VS Code will clutter every folder, where you happen to be when you call VS Code, with dozens of root owned folders.

Personally, if I have to edit anything that requires administrative access, I'll normally use Vim to do so instead of VSCode.

Security aspects aside, I completely agree with the answer by glob about using /root/.config/Code instead of '.'. Or, create a directory for this somewhere else...

As implied, some people want to edit nginx/Apache files or perhaps Linux configuration files such as /etc/hosts as a Visual Studio Code Superuser. If you were to use '.' it will create the entire "Code" directory structure inside of the working directory (/etc or /etc/nginx, etc.) in a dispersed fashion. That's at least 15 directories including Backups, CachedExtensions, Code Cache, plus files. This is not desired in a place such as /etc or any other directory that requires administrative access. Not only is it messy, but is a potential security concern.

If you configure the sshd in wsl with root access, you can use vscode with remote ssh.

create a /usr/local/bin/sucode as below

#!/bin/sh
# wsl host name configured in /etc/wsl.conf
ssh_profile=root@wsl-ubuntu
# function to encode string to url string
urlencode() {
  python -c 'import urllib.parse, sys; print(urllib.parse.quote(" ".join(sys.argv[1:])))' "$@"
}
# get absolute path
path_string=$(realpath $@)
# get url of path
path_url=$(urlencode $path_string)
# if is file
[ -f $1 ] && code --file-uri "vscode-remote://ssh-remote+$ssh_profile$path_url"
# if is folder
[ -d $1 ] && code --folder-uri "vscode-remote://ssh-remote+$ssh_profile$path_url"

and make sure it has the correct ownership and permission.

Now you can use

sucode dir[/file]