Getting "command not found" when trying to run rvm command as sudo

Question

I'm trying to reinstall Ruby on my Ubuntu 14.04 machine but I'm confused about how I need to set up my PATH variable or other things. When I try as my normal user, I get all kinds of Permission denied errors ....

myuser@myproject:~$ rvm reinstall ruby-2.4.0
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/usr/local/rvm/log/1496156193_ruby-2.4.0’: Permission denied
tee: /usr/local/rvm/log/1496156193_ruby-2.4.0/remove.rubies.log: No such file or directory
ruby-2.4.0 - #removing rubies/ruby-2.4.0....
Error running '__rvm_rm_rf /usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0',
showing last 15 lines of /usr/local/rvm/log/1496156193_ruby-2.4.0/remove.rubies.log
tail: cannot open ‘/usr/local/rvm/log/1496156193_ruby-2.4.0/remove.rubies.log’ for reading: No such file or directory
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/usr/local/rvm/log/1496156193_ruby-2.4.0’: Permission denied
tee: /usr/local/rvm/log/1496156193_ruby-2.4.0/remove.rubies.log: No such file or directory
ruby-2.4.0 - #removing rubies/ruby-2.4.0....
Error running '__rvm_rm_rf /usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0',
showing last 15 lines of /usr/local/rvm/log/1496156193_ruby-2.4.0/remove.rubies.log
tail: cannot open ‘/usr/local/rvm/log/1496156193_ruby-2.4.0/remove.rubies.log’ for reading: No such file or directory
Searching for binary rubies, this might take some time.
Found remote file https://rubies.travis-ci.org/ubuntu/14.04/x86_64/ruby-2.4.0.tar.bz2
Checking requirements for ubuntu.
Requirements installation successful.
ruby-2.4.0 - #configure
ruby-2.4.0 - #download
ruby-2.4.0 - #validate archive
ruby-2.4.0 - #extract
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/README.md’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/.travis.yml’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/test/dtf/rubygems_comment_test.sh’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/test/dtf/binary_comment_test.sh’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/test/dtf/bundler_comment_test.sh’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/test/dtf/rails_and_gemfile_comment_test.sh’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/CHANGELOG.md’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/LICENSE’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/rubygems-bundler.gemspec’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/lib/rubygems_executable_plugin.rb’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/lib/rubygems-bundler/version.rb’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/lib/rubygems-bundler/noexec.rb’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/Gemfile’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/.noexec.yaml’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/.gem.config’: Permission denied
rm: cannot remove ‘/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.4.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/rubygems-bundler-1.4.4/.gitignore’: Permission denied
mktemp: failed to create directory via template ‘/usr/local/rvm/tmp/rvm-tmp.XXXXXXXXX’: Permission denied
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘’: No such file or directory
tar: : Cannot open: No such file or directory

but then when I tyr and install as sudo, I get the "command not found" error

myuser@myproject:~$ sudo rvm reinstall ruby-2.4.0
sudo: rvm: command not found

How do I set up my sudo so that it finds my rvm executable just as my normal user can?

Answer 1

Try sudo -E rvm reinstall ruby-2.4.0.

From man sudo:

-E, --preserve-env

Indicates to the security policy that the user wishes to preserve their existing environment variables. The security policy may return an error if the user does not have permission to preserve the environment.