[sudo-users] executing a command as another user w/o password

Todd C. Miller Todd.Miller at courtesan.com
Fri Jun 3 08:45:34 EDT 2011


On Thu, 02 Jun 2011 18:29:23 PDT, kz0twk-unix at yahoo.com wrote:

> i need to setup sudo so that user1 can issue a command as user2 without enter
> ing a password. i tried the following entry in the sudoers file:
> 
> user1    ALL=(user2)  NOPASSWD: /bin/kill
> 
> but when logged in as user1 and execute the command
> 
> sudo -u user2 -i /bin/kill -15 3948
> 
> i get prompted for the password. why does this not work or what do i need to 
> do to make it work.

There's no need to use the -i option here.  What that will do is
wrap the command in a shell so sudo will check to see if user1 is
allowed to run the shell, not /bin/kill.  If you do:

    sudo -u user2 /bin/kill -15 3948

it should work without a password.

 - todd



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