Hey all me again, what do i need to put in my script to check for root privalges and if not then ask for them, what ive got so far is, thankyou in advance for any help.

if [ $(whoami) = "root" ]
then
?????????????????????
then

Here is what I would do...

if [ $(whoami) != "root" ] ; then
      echo sorry, you must be root to run this script >&2
      exit 1
fi

Yes thats what i do more or less, but what i want is if not root then to ask for root password (enter root pass) then carry on with the script .

Eh

if [ $(whoami) != "root" ] ; then
command
else
su root -c command
fi

the su will ask for a password.

it would be a better idea to use sudo:
if [ $(whoami) != "root" ] ; then
/path/to/command
else
sudo /path/to/command
fi

sudo will ask for the password..

Thank you for you reply, but i just cant get it to work, sudo is out of the question as
there is no sudo set up
if i run below as root it prints hello, but if i run as non root it will ask for password then, nothing, what am i doing wrong plse,

#!/bin/bash


if [ $(whoami) = "root" ]
then
echo "hello"
else
su root -c echo "hello"
fi

su root -c "echo hello"
might work. The su command takes the single argument after the -c as the command to be executed. In many cases this winds up being the name of a secondary shell script. In your command you are running echo and your "hello" is just ignored.