Allowing users to shutdown

amwink · 03-03-2005, 11:24 AM

Is there a way to allow ordinary users (ie: non-root) to shutdown and poweroff/restart the system?

Tks.

oneandoneis2 · 03-03-2005, 11:50 AM

Yes: Sudo

However, I confess to cheating with this one: I have XDM as my GUI login screen. And thanks to wish and tcl/tk, I have some buttons on the XDM screen that initiate shutdown or reboot. And since XDM is run as root, that takes care of the whole thing very nicely.

keefaz · 03-03-2005, 11:52 AM

For my part, I edited vi /etc/sudoers and added :
keefaz master = NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown -h now, /sbin/poweroff, /sbin/reboot

(master is my hostname, to know your hostname, type hostname in a terminal)

So to shutdown, I use :
sudo /sbin/poweroff

amwink · 03-03-2005, 12:45 PM

My system starts in the runlevel 3 by default, so I can't use the XDM tweak. Thanks anyway!

I edited the /etc/sudoers, as keefaz suggested, but no success yet. It asks me for a password, but the root's appears not to work even and after the 3 attempts.

The line I added to /etc/sudoers is bellow:

Code:

ander schwarz = NOPASSWD:/sbin/shutdown -h now

What am I doing wrong?

Ander

amwink · 03-03-2005, 12:49 PM

Just explaining: following the KISS philosophy, I decided to put only the shutdown command. After getting it working, I'll put the poweroff and reboot.

Obviously I'm not trying to run poweroff and reboot yet. Just the shutdown, which isn't working.

Thanks

gbonvehi · 03-03-2005, 01:28 PM

You're aparently doing fine, just a doubt, is ander your username and schwarz your hostname? Double check that.

keefaz · 03-03-2005, 01:33 PM

[edit]
I just did some checking, the syntax above is correct, no need to add
ander ALL=(ALL) ALL

cavalier · 03-03-2005, 01:43 PM

FWIW, I have the following line in my sudoers file:

Code:

jas     ALL = NOPASSWD: /sbin/halt, /sbin/reboot, /sbin/mount, /sbin/umount

The only real difference I see is that I didn't limit myself to any particular host (used ALL instead) and put a space between the colon after NOPASSWD and the first forwad slash.

Also, I went with commands without parameters that let me do everything I want to do.

keefaz · 03-03-2005, 01:48 PM

I did not notice the space, cavalier is right, re-edit /etc/sudoers and see

amwink · 03-03-2005, 02:05 PM

It's now working!!

It becomes to work after the line "ander ALL=(ALL) ALL"

Thank you all for the help!

PS: I also tested with and without spaces: no difference noticed.

Oakstaff · 03-04-2005, 02:01 AM

ok i just tried to do all this and get things working for me and I keepin gettin an error. I am on Slack 10.0 btw and I don't want to give my user the ability for ALL commands just the shutdown and such atm.

Here is what i added into the "User Privilege Specification"

Code:

oakstaff home = NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown -h now, /sbin/poweroff, /sbin/reboot

when i try and run the /sbin/shutdown command i get this cyntax error

Code:

>>> sudoers file: syntax error, line 18 <<<
>>> sudoers file: syntax error, line 18 <<<
sudo: parse error in /etc/sudoers near line 18

what am I doing wrong? i don't notice anything wrong but something is somewhere...any help would be appriciated.

PS my hostname is home, and user is oakstaff

keefaz · 03-04-2005, 03:55 AM

Try to add more space after oakstaff, like 2 or 3.
I have the same line in my /etc/sudoers, but with 2 spaces after the user name

KMcD · 03-04-2005, 04:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by amwink
Is there a way to allow ordinary users (ie: non-root) to shutdown and poweroff/restart the system?

Tks.

as root:

Code:

chmod a+s /sbin/shutdown
chmod a+s /sbin/halt

Now any user can use the reboot and shutdown commands. The command reboot is simply a symbolic link to the halt command, which is why the permissions for halt had to be changed.

amwink · 03-04-2005, 10:07 AM

I don't know why, but for me it only works with the line ander ALL=(ALL) ALL, regardless of the number of spaces between the username and hostname in the other line.

And it asks for the ander's password when I type sudo /sbin/shutdown -(any option), even though I added the option NOPASSWD to the sudoers file. If I type the password correcty, the system goes down.

I tried also chmod, as KMcD suggested, but it didn't work for me.

keefaz · 03-04-2005, 03:06 PM

Which text editor do you use to edit /etc/sudoers ?
Also you have to invoke the command the same way it is defined in
/etc/sudoers