On 24/1/2000 Joseph A. Martin wrote:
I have set up a Linux workstation for my family's use. They only need to keep the system on for short periods. (For various reasons I don't want to leave it on full time.) They are using the icewm window manager, which, when they hit ctrl-alt-del, gives them the option of shutting down or rebooting the system. /sbin/shutdown has permissions that do not allow them to use the shutdown command, unfortunately. What permissions must I set to allow anyone on that system to shut it down?
you have to use sudo, shutdown is world executable, it just checks that the user executing it is uid 0
what i did for a similar situation was give the users in question sudo privileges to execute shutdown -h -a now and wrote a couple wrapper scripts that i put in /usr/local/bin
so users can just type shutdown and the system goes down. for windowmaker i added a button to the dock which they can double click and the system goes down.
another trick i did is by adding that -a switch to shutdown, this way i can add a script to my .bashrc file to run sudo touch /etc/shutdown.allow and sudo rm -f /etc/shutdown.allow to .bash_logout this way when i am working on the system through ssh they cannot inadvertantly shut it down on me. my wrapper scripts check for that file and either print out a useful message or call xmessage to put up a dialog with a useful message.
I assume you can configure icewm to call something else on control alt delete, just have it call sudo shutdown -h now, or a wrapper script if you go the route i did.
(btw if you use wrapper scripts like i did, you need to add a symlink from /usr/local/sbin/shutdown -> /sbin/shutdown otherwise sudo will try and run your fake shutdown wrapper instead of the real one)
-- Ethan Benson To obtain my PGP key: http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/pgp/