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The permissions on /sbin/shutdown enable root and all people in the root group to use this command. What I would do is create a group (e.g. wheel) and add the users who you want to be able to shutdown the machine to this group. Then change the group of the /sbin/shutdown command to the wheel group. Now everybody in the wheel group will be able to shutdown the machine.
As for the X logon screen I don't know. Its a good question that I don't have the answer to.
Crashed, what about $PATH. I'd venture to guess alot of distro's don't include sbin in the users' path. So this person would also have to add /sbin to any user's path who they also wanted to add the "wheel". I do believe sudoers is going to be a slightly more secure/"standard" way of going about this. Not that your idea isn't going to work, just adding /sbin to everyone's path is probably not the best idea since you don't always want every user to both be able to shutdown the system (without some work) and a few other things that are in /sbin for a reason
he he he Not clean up your mess, simply assist in answering the question. Your response is a valid one, and could very easily be used. If someone doesn't want to use sudoers for some reason, I'd say your response is going to be fine, and doesn't lack all security because you are adding specific users to a defined group with some purpose.
I was not aware that sudoers was more secure then my method although you are right about the $PATH thing. I forgot about that. DOH! What about the graphical logon thing?
Oh boy I know I'm gonna get blasted for this one. I'm just waiting for acid_kewpie to come in here and tell us we are all idiots. MOOVE!!(Nick Burns-Your Companies Computer Guy)
What about it? Not sure what you are asking about the graphical login thing? And I'm assuming you mean KDM or GDM when you say graphical login thing. And it's necessarily "less secure/more secure" AFAIK, but rather sudoers is made to do things exactly like that. It's using a user to take care of some of root's dirty work
Aint got sudo installed, so I'll do it when I come in from the pub.
I would like to sort out the X logon screen, preventing simply anyone from either shutting down or rebooting the machine, this is by default, and I for one don't like it...
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