[sudo-users] Configuring /etc/sudoers

Michael Potter pottmi at gmail.com
Wed May 2 09:25:11 EDT 2007


Stephen,

>From your description you experienced frustration with vi rather than
with visudo.

Here is my recommendation.

export EDITOR=/your/favorite/editor
sudo visudo

that will change the editor that visudo uses to your favorite editor.

Maybe someone with the exact distribution that you have can give a
recommendation for an exact path to an easy to use editor.

if you are just puttering around with linux then running your favorite
editor can be fine, but if you are serious, then you should learn a
little vi so that you can get out of trouble the odd time you need to
run vi.


-- 
Michael Potter

On 5/2/07, Stephen Constantinou <stephanos at writeme.com> wrote:
> Dear All
>
> I am new to Linux and I am using Mandriva 2007.  There is so much new
> terminology and I am learning very slowly.  I mention this as I have
> joined a few forums but I find that documentation is written for
> experienced users and not new people like me.  I have even found that
> e-mail forums make replies that are far to advanced for me.  I have had
> to stop trying to configure a free anti virus programme for these
> reasons and go over to a commercial programme with technical support
> available via e-mail and telephone as a way of over coming this problem.
>
> I wish to run two commands that have to be run as root, but as a user.
> I am trying to avoid having to enter a password/any password.
>
> The commands are:
>       /opt/kaspersky/kav4ws/bin/kav4ws-kavscanner
>       /opt/kaspersky/kav4ws/bin/kav4ws-keepup2date
> The user/group for these two files are "root"
>
> I have read the html documentation at
>      http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo/
> and run the command visudo (as root) in order to open the
> /etc/sudoers file.
> I am sorry to say that I found this application impossible to use.  I
> did not exit cleanly because pressing q just deleted text and with no on
> screen prompts (except what does "Recording" mean) I just ended up
> killing the terminal window I was in and then deleting the hidden file
> after.  I did read the web page:
>       http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo/man/visudo.html
> but I could not relate this enough and start editing, exit without
> saving or even enter text (perhaps this is what recording is).
>
> All this is just an unnecessary additional problem to the overall
> problem that I did not understand the help files on /etc/sudoers anyway.
>
> I have attempted to show below what I should be adding to this file.  I
> have one user "stephanos" and I want to be able to type at the command
> line as that user the words "$ sudo scan" which will run as root the
> command "/opt/kaspersky/kav4ws/bin/kav4ws-kavscanner" but without having
> to enter a password/any password.
>
>       User_Alias     scan = stephanos
>       stephanos     ALL=    /opt/kaspersky/kav4ws/bin/kav4ws-kavscanner
>       scan     stephanos = NOPASSWD: ALL
>
> Now if this is wrong, and I am sure it is, please do not laugh as I have
> experienced much frustration just getting to this stage.  What is also
> not clear is where in the file the lines I wish to add should apprear.
>
> Yours with much distress
>
> Stephen Constantinou
>
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