PYTHONPATH not working for sudo on GNU/Linux (works for root)

Another tip:

sudo echo $PYTHONPATH:
    /home/name/lib/py

It won't work. Shell will interpret it like this:

1) expand $PYTHONPATH from env variable for example: /usr/lib/python

2) execute "sudo echo /usr/lib/python"

The fix in my case was to remove Defaults !env_reset from sudoers.

But, I had to keep Defaults env_keep += "PYTHONPATH" in sudoers.
I've actually added Defaults env_reset (which resets environment variables), but it still works because of env_keep.

It seems that env_keep and !env_reset conflict with eachother, but that's just a guess.

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So, the whole process:

1. add export PYTHONPATH=/your/custom/path to ~/.bashrc or /etc/bash.bashrc
2. add PYTHONPATH to Defaults env_keep += "ENV1 ENV2 ..." in sudoers file
3. remove Defaults !env_reset from sudoers file if present

Alternatives to manipulating PYTHONPATH:

• virtualenv
• distutils

The same is true for the PATH variable, it's also not carried into the super user environment, even though you're passing the preserve environment flag -E.

I'm using this sudo command now without any other modifications:

sudo -HE env PATH=$PATH PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH ./bin/myscript

Since it's an alternative approach that works (for me) I thought I'd share here.