I have a backup script that simply tars up a couple of folders, but it needs to be as root to read all the files without errors.

I read the UID article here:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2114

and chmod my script to 4711, permission of the file is as follow:

-rws--x--x 1 root root 430 Nov 22 22:38 backup.sh*

However, when I run the script as a normal user, it still gives errors when running the tar command.

What am I doing wrong? How can I allow any regular users to run the script as root, I'll rather not have to fiddle with the sudoer file.

The backup script is something like:

---

#!/bin/bash

tar -zcf /backups/daily.tar.gz \
/backups/mysql/daily \
/home

---

You can't have suid scripts in Linux for security reasons.

It shouldn't be too hard using "visudo" to modify /etc/sudoers. There is an example of allowing regular users to mount a cdrom as root. Base your entry on that.

To expand a bit on jschiwal's comments, you could look at http://www.linuxsecurity.com/content/view/119415/49/ which explains the issues around shell scripts and suid, pointing out that modern distributions of linux will not respect the suid bit or the guid bit on shell scripts.

sudo really is the proper way of doing these things. If you are managing this sort of setup and want to provide limited root capabilities for other users without compromising the security of your system, then you really should get to know sudo. If you aren't already familiar with it, go over the man page of course, but there are also some interesting links on the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo

Cool, thanks everyone, I can now run the script using sudo without a password by adding the following line to sudoes:

robo ALL=NOPASSWD:/backups/backup.sh

Brings me to the next question...what user name does cron/anacron job gets run under? i.e. how do I setup anacron to run the script as root?

Secondly...slightly off topic, how do I save the messages that tar prints out to a text file?