AIX

I am sorry but this is worst idea that you can have....

Let me give some examples how you can gain root privileges:

vi - is having possibility to go out to shell..with root access or you cann edit any file
smitty - the same thin on each moment you can press F9 and go to shell
find - command has also privileges to execute commands as root (look for exec in man)
cat - using this command you can overwrite any file and then usi it to execute any command on system
chuser - with this command you can change any user parameters including root

All those commands looks harmless but you can use them to gain root privileges.
In my opinion or you are giving privileges to people that you can trust or you are not giving them privileges at all.

Any half way just creates risk to you.

If you have some application teams that you do not want to give root access just give them access to sudo su - to specific application user if they need more privileges they should ask you for help

Daniel,

You can use the Cmnd_Alias in the following to assign to a specific or a group of users:

Code:

idadmin          ALL=NOPASSWD:  IDADMIN
# for a group use % sign in front of the group name
%idadmingr    ALL=NOPASSWD:  IDADMIN

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!!

Sorry to be slightly off topic, though...

@admin_xor:
Agreed. Additionally it can become very complex using RBAC if one starts to go in depth and detail, at least the impression I got. We use it only to stop using root. It is also one of the things I would prefer to have a good graphical front end in such cases of using plenty of roles and custom permissions^^