Especially useful if you need to use proxies. E.g., this will fail since the `sudo` user doesn't know about the `https_proxy` variable. sudo curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable --ruby The solution is to `visudo`, find this Defaults env_reset and add this for each variable you want available. Defaults env_keep += "variable1 variable2" In the case of proxies, Defaults env_keep += "http_proxy https_proxy ftp_proxy"