sudo and smartctl /dev/hda permission problem on Slackware 10.2

emphaze · 06-21-2006, 05:41 AM

Hi all.
I`m trying to give user "joe" permissions to execute smartctl -H /dev/hda on my system. I`ve added a line like
"joe localhost = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/smartctl -H /dev/hda" in my /etc/sudoers file, but when i run sudo -u joe /usr/sbin/smartctl -H /dev/hda the following error appeared "Smartctl open device: /dev/hda failed: Permission denied" . Permissions of /dev/hda are "brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 0 2006-03-20 13:12 /dev/hda", so i`ve added user "joe" to group disk, but that don't solve the problem. After executing above command i get the error "A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options."

Any suggestions what i'm doing(or not doing) wrong?

binary_y2k2 · 06-21-2006, 06:12 AM

maybe because your are trying to run the command as joe rather than joe running the command as root.
What I mean by that is, when you run

Code:

sudo -u joe (command)

you are runnaing a command with joe's UID and GID. But if you ran

Code:

sudo -u joe bash #Or whatever shell he uses
sudo (command)

then the user joe would run the command as root.

emphaze · 06-21-2006, 07:47 AM

You are right...stupid mistake. Thank you for your help.