is it possible to set a script to run as root and not prompt for the root password? could i hide the root password and access it from a script?

i would like to set up my machine so its able to be rebooted by a non-root user. is this even possible in linux?

Non-root user can reboot the PC (even can do anything that root can), but the condition is that user must know the 'root password'. With root password, normal users can have all the privileges of root.

thanks guys, i also found the following solution here and it worked well for my purposes.
http://www.bostream.nu/stdf/linuxtips/00000059.html


Shutdown for non-root users

Allowing non-root users to shutdown a Linux box.

1. As root create a group shutdown.
#addgroup shutdown

2. Put /sbin/shutdown into the group shutdown.
#chown root.shutdown /sbin/shutdown

3. Change accessrights to make /sbin/shutdown setuid and disallow
other users from executing shutdown.
#chmod 4754 /sbin/shutdown

4. Make a link from /bin/shutdown to /sbin/shutdown
#ln -s /sbin/shutdown /bin/shutdown

Now anyone belonging to the group shutdown can execute shutdown but I just will
allow the person in control of the keyboard to be able to issue the shutdown
command. You might prefer something else.

For the following to work you need to have "shadow password" installed but I
believe most have it.

5. Edit the file login.defs. Near the end of this file locate the line
#CONSOLE_GROUPS floppy:audio:cdrom
Remove the hashsign and add the group shutdown to this line and you get:
CONSOLE_GROUPS floppy:audio:cdrom:shutdown

Thats it. Everyone logged in via the console will belong to these groups so
you need not add anyone to them. I believe this is better than to just add
users to the group shutdown.

It probably is rather poor practice to pass the root password around to all users. The preferred way is to use sudo to give normal users root access to specific commands like shutdown.

Thanks for the useful info Dude.....

Actually, just use the sudo tool to give the user specifically the ability to shutdown and nothing else.
It's exactly the sort of problem sudo was designed to solve.