On Sun, 19 Mar 2000, Satya wrote:
> On Mar 18, 2000 at 20:38, Philip S Tellis wrote:
>
> >I have to be root to run shutdown and halt. If I run it as any other
> >user, it asks for a password.
>
> Because you're on the console. The *physical* console.
Don't make a diff, even if I telnet in.
> > I assume this is the root password, and
>
> No, it's the password of $USER
That's not logical. If all I needed was my own password, then I could
telnet into any machine and shut it down. It's got to be the root
password.
Problem is, nothing works. I could enter any password, only root's would
be accepted, but the machine will never shutdown unless I directly execute
/sbin/shutdown (normal non-root users would execute /usr/bin/shutdown
which is a link to console-helper which in turn executes userhelper which
is something that uses PAM to execute root permission programs in
unpriviledged mode.)
In any case, I do not consider it safe to suid root to shutdown my
machine. I do not consider it safe to suid root for anything. It's just
a habit I wish to cultivate.
I should be able to execute all root privilidged programs as a user on
supplying the correct password.
Why can't it just be as simple as:
su -c shutdown - root
That would ask me for the password and shutdown. Except that my PATH
would still be used, so /usr/bin/ would be in the path and not /sbin
Philip
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