I am running Fedora 14 and starting a c program from rc.local My program can request a system reboot from a script called rebootscript.sh that has been copied to the current working directory, also to the root/bin directory as well as to a user/bin directory. (I'm desperate... what can I say)

the program calls the script with

strcpy(name,"sudo /bin/sh rebootscript");
system( name);

The rebootscript is as follows:

#!/bin/sh

clear
sudo reboot

If I manually start the c program after the system boots up, it works fine. If I start the c program from rc.local it does not work. The only difference I see is that when starting from rc.local, root is the owner. When starting manually after boot, the user is the owner of the process.

What am I missing???
thanks for any help

I am no expert on this, but when the program runs from rc.local it is run as root, as you already pointed out. That makes the call with sudo unnecessary and may be this interferes somehow with the execution of the program. What happens if you start it manually from the command-line as root? Also, what happens if you start it from rc.local as a normal user?

Try using full paths in the script.

TobiSGD
Thanks for your response. I originally call the script without the 'sudo' and also without the '/bin/sh' (just the 'rebootscript'). None of these worked when the C program was started from the rc.local file.

I will try starting it from the command line as root.

How would I start the C program in the rc.local file with a different owner than root?

su <user name> <path to compiled and linked C program>
or, if you want to run the different user's logon shell's logon initialisation:
su - <user name> <path to compiled and linked C program>

Thanks to all.
I tried the su <user name> <path to compiled and linked C program>, without success. The /var/log/boot.log and messages files kept identifing the rc.local had a compatability problem. Never could get around that.
I have found an easier way to reboot my system from a c program. I just use system("init 6") in the c program and it works every time whether the c program was started with the rc.local file or manually after booting and login in.
Again thanks for the suggestions.