How to execute commands as a root privileged user?

Support knowledgebase (cep_sudo)
Applies to

SuSE Linux: All versions

Request:

Some commands requiring root privileges shall be accessible to other users, without including them into group root. Very often this is desirable for the commands ppp-up and ppp-down.

Procedure:

  1. This can be done by using package sudo. It´s in series ap. It is installed with YaST2.
    sudo allows a permitted user to execute a command as the superuser (real and effective uid and gid are set to 0 and root's group as set in the passwd file respectively).
  2. sudo determines who is an authorized user by consulting the file /etc/sudoers. By giving sudo the -v flag a user can update the time stamp without running a command. The password prompt itself will also time out if the password is not entered with N minutes (again, this is defined at installation time and defaults to 5 minutes).
  3. If an unauthorized user executes sudo, mail will be sent from the user to the local authorities (defined at installation time).
  4. sudo was designed to log via the 4.3 BSD syslog(3) facility but can log to a file instead if so desired (or to both syslog and a file).
  5. All preferences are defined at installation time and are derived from the options.h and pathnames.h include files as well as as well as the Makefile.

See also:
o sudo - sudo.bin: command not found

Keywords: SUDO, ROOT, EXECUTE, COMMAND, SUID, GID, NETWORK, PPP, MODEM

Categories: Frequently asked Questions

SDB-cep_sudo, Copyright SuSE Linux AG, Nürnberg, Germany - Version: 10. Jan 1999
SuSE Linux AG - Last generated: 23. Apr 2002 by sdb (sdb_gen 1.40.0)