sudoers Cmnd_Alias usage

tmy · 07-30-2011, 07:57 PM

Hi,
Inside of my sudoers file, I would like to give my DBA's the ability to switch to their Administrative accounts. I am currently using the Cmnd_Alias function to provide access to some commands, and want to give /bin/su, but need to limit the IDs available to them. Is it possible to specify /bin/su - <userid>?
How else can this be accomplished?

Thank you!

rgdacosta · 07-31-2011, 06:41 AM

Do you definitely want to do it by UID and not by USERNAME?

tmy · 08-01-2011, 05:55 AM

Sorry, I would like to provide the %dba group access to a specific username, like oracle. This way they can switch to oracle from their personal logins.

Thank you!

rgdacosta · 08-01-2011, 08:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmy

This way they can switch to oracle from their personal logins.

I could be misunderstanding your requirements but if you want to change your primary group from foo to bar you could use:

Code:

sg bar

You could also want to limit which users can make use of /bin/su in which case you could change the owning or named group of that file to oracle and delegate them that privilege via sudo.

Let me know in as much detail what you're trying to do.

SL00b · 08-01-2011, 08:13 AM

Add this line in your sudoers file to give every member of the dba group the rights to run any command as the userid oracle:

Code:

# User privilege specification
%dba     ALL = (oracle) ALL

Usage:

Code:

sudo -u oracle <command>

tmy · 08-02-2011, 06:10 AM

I have the Cmnd_Alias DBA = /bin/su <-- allows people in the dba group to switch to any user they choose. I would like to restrict it to 1 specific user, which is the admiinistrative database user "oracle" can I set the Cmnd_Alias DBA = /bin/su - oracle? Can I identify 1 specific user that the /bin/su applies to in Cmnd_Alias? I've never done that before, and am not sure it would work. Then, I set the group dba to allow commands in DBA Cmnd_Alias...

%dba ALL = DBA

Thank you for helping me with this.

Reuti · 08-02-2011, 06:59 AM

Yes, the executing user of the su command must be root though:

Code:

%dba ALL = (root) DBA

SL00b · 08-02-2011, 08:42 AM

Why on earth would you give a DBA full access to root? And if you're going to do that, why go through the exercise of creating a command alias to do it?

Reuti · 08-02-2011, 09:38 AM

Only the /bin/su - oracle will run as root, and you end up as being logged in as oracle.

NB: I use this with NOPASSWD: in addition, so that user A can switch to user B without a password.

tmy · 08-03-2011, 06:02 AM

Thank you everyone! The command works great. I set the following:

## DBA
Cmnd_Alias DBA = /bin/su - oracle
%dba ALL = DBA

Which gives the DBA's the ability to switch to their admin account "oracle".
Thank you again, this was something I wanted to get put into production, and now I can. Have a great day!!!