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I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 and am having issues getting to the log files in /var/log/apache2

I can cd to most other places (I haven't tried every single file, obviously) but when I try to get to the above directory, I get the error message sudo: cd: command not found

... I've just tried something else and I can't cd when used in conjunction with sudo. I can use sudo when doing things like apt-get but it seems I can't change directory when using sudo.

I haven't been on this server for a while but I know I used to be able to do this.

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On most systems, cd isn't a program, it's a shell command, so you can't use sudo to run it. Try sudo -i to get an interactive shell then cd into that directory.

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    That's not 100% true - on some systems there is a cd in /usr/bin as well as the shell built-in, and that's what sudo will invoke. However, even when that's true, it won't do you any good because once the sudo command finishes and exits you're back at the directory you started at.
    – Paul Tomblin
    Dec 31, 2010 at 14:34
  • How would a /usr/bin/cd command function? Doesn't the "it won't do you any good" part apply even without sudo?
    – mattdm
    Dec 31, 2010 at 15:17
  • Hah! Learn something new every day. @mattdm: Apparently systems with a cd program have it so that scripts can test if you can change into a directory or not (by checking its return value for errors) unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.unix.solaris/2006-07/…
    – DerfK
    Dec 31, 2010 at 17:05
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Supplemental to DerfK's answer;

Before I discovered sudo -i, I'd use sudo ls /var/log/abcd to identify the files in such a directory, and then read the files more directly.

Not the cleanest way,... but there's always more than one way to skin a cat..

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