Linux Security Cookbook

5.3. Running Commands as Another User via sudo

Problem

You want one user to run commands as another, without sharing passwords.

Solution

Suppose you want user smith to be able to run a given command as user jones.

               /etc/sudoers:
smith  ALL = (jones) /usr/local/bin/mycommand

User smith runs:

smith$ sudo -u jones /usr/local/bin/mycommand
smith$ sudo -u jones mycommand                     If /usr/local/bin is in $PATH

User smith will be prompted for his own password, not jones’s. The ALL keyword, which matches anything, in this case specifies that the line is valid on any host.

Discussion

sudo exists for this very reason!

To authorize root privileges for smith, replace “jones” with “root” in the above example.

See Also

sudo(8), sudoers(5).