Running shell scripts, commands need root/su, how?
 

I've written a couple of shell scripts and some of the commands in them need root privileges. I've read somewhere to never put the root or super user's password in a script because it's not encrypted. How do I run these commands as root/su in a script?

sudo scriptname

oops, sorry. They won't be ran manually, they'll be kicked off by cron. So it has to be automated, no user input required.

You can configure sudo to not require a password for specific commands.

Evo2.

PS. However, if you do this for the script, make very sure that the script is only writable by root. A slightly better approach is just to use sudo for the specific commands where root is needed, not for the whole script.

hmmm. how about "sudo crontab -e"? won't that make my scripts run with root privileges?

@ digity - you are correct.

Just add it to root's crontab instead of yours.
Running from inside su or sudo can confuse crontab (see man crontab) so:

sudo -i
crontab -e