avoid using sudo on the commandline

[mlh at zip.com.au]

On Wed, 04 Feb 2004 17:15:50 -0600
Rick Weinbender <lsrwein at central-ph.k12.mo.us> wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm trying to find a way for a regular user to run a bash script
> (as root) from the commandline, without having to type the
> word 'sudo' in front of the scriptname.
> Is this possible?
> I found a info clip from the web, but I can't get it to work.
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> exec /usr/bin/sudo /some/path/to/our/target/prog "$@"
> 

That should work fine.  What sort of error are you getting?

/some/path/to/our/target/prog should be in sudoers, with
exactly that path of course.

A note with "$@"  -- most shells have what I would call a bug
in that if there are no args supplied, "$@" evaluates to "".
Whereas you really want nothing at all.  Sudo might object
to getting an arg, even if it's empty.

Try using ${1:+"$@"} instead.  It means:
if $1 is defined (i.e. there are any args at all)
use "$@", i.e. all the args properly quoted.

if $1 is NOT defined, (i.e. no args are given)
then use nothing at all.

Regards,

Matt