Re: How do I allow users to run a single command as root?

[Rob Browning <osiris@cs.utexas.edu>]

tjobrien@tjobrien.traveller.com (Tim O'Brien) writes:

> Any ideas on how to accomplish this? I tried reading the man pages, but 
> su (which I think is what I would need to use) is not exactly what I'd   
> call well documented. 

su will only work if you want to give the users the root password (not
a good idea).  What you want is either the sudo package or the super
package.  I use sudo.  It lets you specify which users are allowed to
run which commands as root.  Then, to run the command, the user types

sudo some_command maybe with args

and sudo will ask them for *their* password, and if it's OK, run the
command for them as root.

"man sudo" has all the details.

--
Rob