You can use the Cmnd_Alias in the following to assign to a specific or a group of users:
NOPASSWD simply tells that user do not need to enter password while using sudo. If not needed in your case, do not use it.
zaxxon,
Yes, even I would vote for RBAC but keeping in mind that there are still a lot of 5L AIX systems around in the industry, RBAC may not implemented widely and specially when ID Administration works under the shadow of Information Security (in our case). But, if it's 6.1 or even 7.1 AIX, RBAC is the thing people should go for.
gito,
Good catch! There's always a risk with programs which accept shell escapes. We did not have any other way to achieve the same goal with AIX5.1L. sudo su - to a specific user does not add any advantage. What if the person do need vi to edit the permitted file in sudoers? Contacting server admins for editing files in vi is surely not an option in the huge environment we work in. Any better suggestion is always welcome!!
Is it possible to grant write privileges to a user on a directory with out having to add the user to a group or make the user the owner of the directory?
My background is in Windows and in Windows you can grant specific privileges to a user without having to put the user in a group or making the... (3 Replies)
I'm trying to give a non-root user the right to start IBM HTTP Server, the web server is listening on port 80, but for AIX, ports under 1024 are privilege ports which can be used only by root.
/usr/IBMIHS/bin# ./apachectl start
(13)Permission denied: make_sock: could not bind to address :::80... (1 Reply)
Hello experts I am new to Unix.
Env : HPUX
I need to create a user say testuser such that it does not have access to file/directories from the other group i.e the last 3 digits .
How do I do that.
Reason for such a request :-
I have an existing user oracle which has default umask... (3 Replies)
I have setup public key based login to my CentOS VPS. I wish to disable direct root login and have created an admin user under wheel group and have modified /etc/sudoers file and gave Wheel group all privileges.
But now I am being prompted for password whenever I type sudo. I do not wish to... (4 Replies)
I am planning to implement sudo for users.
Under , it looks I have to put the users who need to have sudo access:
What are the recommended for users? I don't think I need to give the ALL privilege (i.e ) to AIX users.
I'd like to know the commonly used privilege specification for sudo... (1 Reply)
Hi ,
I want to create 3 different user with below privilege in Solaris and Linux.
1) Read Only
2)Read and Write Only
3) Admin user
Can you guys help me on this . (3 Replies)
Hi
I need to assign proc_owner privilege to particular user through RBAC. How can I assign this privilege to user, I need help on this.
Further I need to understand if I give this proc_owner privilege to particular user, what kind of control user will get on other user or system processes... (7 Replies)
Discussion started by: sb200
7 Replies
LEARN ABOUT LINUX
sudo_root
sudo_root(8) System Manager's Manual sudo_root(8)NAME
sudo_root - How to run administrative commands
SYNOPSIS
sudo command
sudo -i
INTRODUCTION
By default, the password for the user "root" (the system administrator) is locked. This means you cannot login as root or use su. Instead,
the installer will set up sudo to allow the user that is created during install to run all administrative commands.
This means that in the terminal you can use sudo for commands that require root privileges. All programs in the menu will use a graphical
sudo to prompt for a password. When sudo asks for a password, it needs your password, this means that a root password is not needed.
To run a command which requires root privileges in a terminal, simply prepend sudo in front of it. To get an interactive root shell, use
sudo -i.
ALLOWING OTHER USERS TO RUN SUDO
By default, only the user who installed the system is permitted to run sudo. To add more administrators, i. e. users who can run sudo, you
have to add these users to the group 'admin' by doing one of the following steps:
* In a shell, do
sudo adduser username admin
* Use the graphical "Users & Groups" program in the "System settings" menu to add the new user to the admin group.
BENEFITS OF USING SUDO
The benefits of leaving root disabled by default include the following:
* Users do not have to remember an extra password, which they are likely to forget.
* The installer is able to ask fewer questions.
* It avoids the "I can do anything" interactive login by default - you will be prompted for a password before major changes can happen,
which should make you think about the consequences of what you are doing.
* Sudo adds a log entry of the command(s) run (in /var/log/auth.log).
* Every attacker trying to brute-force their way into your box will know it has an account named root and will try that first. What they do
not know is what the usernames of your other users are.
* Allows easy transfer for admin rights, in a short term or long term period, by adding and removing users from the admin group, while not
compromising the root account.
* sudo can be set up with a much more fine-grained security policy.
* On systems with more than one administrator using sudo avoids sharing a password amongst them.
DOWNSIDES OF USING SUDO
Although for desktops the benefits of using sudo are great, there are possible issues which need to be noted:
* Redirecting the output of commands run with sudo can be confusing at first. For instance consider
sudo ls > /root/somefile
will not work since it is the shell that tries to write to that file. You can use
ls | sudo tee /root/somefile
to get the behaviour you want.
* In a lot of office environments the ONLY local user on a system is root. All other users are imported using NSS techniques such as
nss-ldap. To setup a workstation, or fix it, in the case of a network failure where nss-ldap is broken, root is required. This tends to
leave the system unusable. An extra local user, or an enabled root password is needed here.
GOING BACK TO A TRADITIONAL ROOT ACCOUNT
This is not recommended!
To enable the root account (i.e. set a password) use:
sudo passwd root
Afterwards, edit the sudo configuration with sudo visudo and comment out the line
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
to disable sudo access to members of the admin group.
SEE ALSO sudo(8), https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RootSudo
February 8, 2006 sudo_root(8)