

There are many options to the sudoers file, but the most simple format and one that you will see quite often is a line that gives a specific user a set of commands that he or she can run. The sudoers file contains a list of users, and what commands that those users can run and as what users those commands can be run as. This means that you need to switch to the root account, for example: su root visudo or run sudo visudo as your own account.

The visudo command has to be executed with approved priviledges. It effectively starts the vi editor and edits as the /etc/sudoers file. If you need to modify the sudo configuration, use the command visudo. Running as user: nikki Example 4: Change to root account To run a command as the other user: $ sudo -u nikki /etc/nikkiapp/bin/start Mongodb started Example 3: Run a command as the other user Run a command with sudo $ sudo /etc/mongodb start In this case, user robin can run any command. User robin may run the following commands on robin-ThinkPad-T410: Secure_path=/usr/local/sbin\:/usr/local/bin\:/usr/sbin\:/usr/bin\:/sbin\:/bin Matching Defaults entries for robin on robin-ThinkPad-T410: You can run the following to see what command can be run with sudo: $ sudo -l CommandsĮxamples Example 1: What command to run with sudo. You can specify a user with the -u option. If you run sudo -s that will start a shell as root. Switch to the username's account with the username's environment.Īnother way to switch to another account with sudo is to use the -s option. Switch to the superuser account with root's environment. The sudo su - username would switch to that username's account with an environment that you would expect to see when you logged in as that user. You can use sudo su - to switch to the superuser account with root's environment. You can use sudo su to switch to the superuser account.

However, if you want to run a command as another user, you need to specify that with -u. You can specify a user with -u, for example sudo -u root command is the same as sudo command. To run a command as the root user, use sudo command. To see the commands that are available for you to run with sudo, use sudo -l. Of course, on your personal system, you have access to the root account, and you are effectively the system administrator as well. The sudo configuration is typically controlled by the system administrator and requires root access to change. If the sudo configuration permits access, that command is executed. When you execute the sudo command, you are prompted for your password. This could eliminate some issues that arise from using shared passwords in generic accounts.
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One of the advantages of using sudo over the su command is that you don't need to know the password of the other user. It is commonly used to install, start and stop applications that require root priviledges. This why sudo is referred to as superuser do. Like su, if no username is specified, it assumes that you were trying to run commands as the superuser. The sudo allows you to run programs with the security priviledges of another user. The sudo - Super User DoĪnother way to switch users or execute commands as others is to use the sudo command.
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auth sufficient pam_rootok.soĪuth pam_succeed_if.so user = otheruserĪuth sufficient pam_succeed_if.This lesson will cover how to switch to other accounts using sudo command. If you modified your auth file to the following, any user that was part of group somegroup could su to otheruser without a password. You can modify the /etc/pam.d/su file to allow su without password. Su can only switch user without providing a password if you are root. The sudoers policyĪllows uids that are not in the password database as longĪs the targetpw option is not set. When running commands asĪ uid, many shells require that the '#' be escaped with aīackslash ('\'). See: How does sudo handle $HOME differently since 19.10?) -u user The -u (user) option causes sudo to run the specifiedĬommand as a user other than root. (Starting from Ubuntu 19.10, -H is no longer needed as this is now the default behaviour. Depending on the policy, this may be the default Target user (root by default) as specified by the passwordĭatabase. The HOME environment variable to the home directory of the The relevant parts of man sudo: -H The -H (HOME) option requests that the security policy set sudo -H -u otheruser bash -c 'echo "I am $USER, with uid $UID"' You can do that with su or sudo, no need for both.
