What is the purpose of %{seq} in sudo/sudoers?

Question

I have the ability to configure IO logging for sudo by setting iolog_dir, and according to the sudoers man page, these are the following variables I can use:

%{seq}
expanded to a monotonically increasing base-36 sequence number, such as 0100A5, where every two digits are used to form a new directory, e.g. 01/00/A5

%{user}
expanded to the invoking user's login name

%{group}
expanded to the name of the invoking user's real group ID

%{runas_user}
expanded to the login name of the user the command will be run as (e.g. root)

%{runas_group}
expanded to the group name of the user the command will be run as (e.g. wheel)

%{hostname}
expanded to the local host name without the domain name

%{command}
expanded to the base name of the command being run

I understand the purpose of all of these variables, except for %{seq}. I can't see a benefit of expanding a variable that produces something like this. Can someone explain why this exists?

EDIT: My coworker actually found an answer for me. It seems that you can use a command called sudoreplay along with a given sequence number to literally replay a given sudo session in real time. I didn't know about it before today, and it's pretty cool to see it happen in my terminal, but I don't think I will ever actually use it.

Answer 1

My coworker actually found an answer for me. It seems that you can use a command called sudoreplay along with a given sequence number to literally replay a given sudo session in real time. I didn't know about it before today, and it's pretty cool to see it happen in my terminal, but I don't think I will ever actually use it.