UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Hi

I'm root on a SCO 5.0.5 Unix system. My printer 'enable' command can only be executed by root. On other versions of Unix I've used, ordinary users can use enable/disable on their own printer requests.

Is there a way of allowing all users to execute 'enable'?

At the moment they get "Insufficient authorization for attempted operation." This response seems to be hard-coded into the enable program file, so it is not a matter of setting permissions. I've tried setting 4755 permission on a shell script to run enable, but it still knows when the user is not root.

Thanks in anticipation

what is the enable command, I havent ever seen it. However is the setuid bit in the permissions of the executable set?

the 'force' method when nothing helps is to wrap this script with another named 'enabled' that is placed earlier in $PATH and executes original with the help of sudo /.../enable

Do not forget to add appropriate entry in /etc/sudoers

Thanks for those replies.

SCO Unix does not have a sudo option. I suspect this is a Linux utility.

The enable command, along with disable, is part of the lp set used to enable and disable printers. It can be used to temporarily hold print jobs, and unlike accept/reject, still allows print jobs to be spooled.

I've tried setting the suid bit and putting the command inside another script with full execute permission, but it appears that the requirement that it is run by root is hard-coded into the executable.

Any other ideas?

The main idea is to run command under root, may be in wrapper script use

Code:

su - -c enable

But how to pass password to the su command?

Haven't used SCO for about 3 years but on OpenServer 5 I did set up a few users with printer admin permissions. There was a character based gui'ish utility for adding and removing users' permissions - called something like scoadmin?
Hope this helps you to find it.
cheers

Ah now then. I've had a prowl through scoadmin, but it doesn't seem to allow me to change privilidges as it is greyed out. But you have pointed me in the direction of "authorisatoins and protected subsystems". Seems there might be something in there that might allow me to give users more access to control of lp functions.
Just got to get my head round the usual obtuse description in the book!

Thanks for your input Steve.