Subject: How do I allow users to run a single command as root?

From: [email-masked] (Tim O'Brien)
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 22:49:45 -0500 (CDT)

I've written a few scripts to automatically connect to my ISP, which has 
several incoming lines. What I'd like to do is make these scripts so that
the user running them does not have to be root. I've tried changing the 
permissions to rwx__x__x, still owned by root, but it doesn't do the job.
I need to make this simply a command a user can run without them having
to know the root password.

Any ideas on how to accomplish this? I tried reading the man pages, but 
su (which I think is what I would need to use) is not exactly what I'd   
call well documented. 

Thanks,  

Tim O'Brien 

E-mail: [email-masked]

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From: Rob Browning <[email-masked]>
Date: 15 Aug 1996 23:28:25 -0500

> su (which I think is what I would need to use) is not exactly what I'd   

su will only work if you want to give the users the root password (not
a good idea).  What you want is either the sudo package or the super
package.  I use sudo.  It lets you specify which users are allowed to
run which commands as root.  Then, to run the command, the user types

sudo some_command maybe with args

and sudo will ask them for *their* password, and if it's OK, run the
command for them as root.

"man sudo" has all the details.

--
Rob