Becoming su in a script

[sym]

I am trying to write some bash scripts, but some of the things I want them to do involve being root. I have not had a lot of luck becoming the su in the script, so I was wondering how other people did it.

Thanks!

[sans-hubris]

Set the owner to root and execute as root. Checkout the man page for chown.

[ 24 October 2001: Message edited by: Muad Dib --formerly ndogg ]

[sym]

What I want to do is allow a non-root user to execute a script that performs a function that requires root permissions (mount a file system).

I don't want to have to manually change to the superuser before I execute this script. Is there any way to do this?

[Strike]

You can make it setuid root, but this is a severe security risk. Are you sure there isn't a better way of doing this? Generally you don't want normal users doing what the super-user should be doing. Granted, it can be annoying switching to root for things that are semi-routine such as installing/updating software, but for that I recommend sudo (http://www.courtesan.com/sudo)

[sym]

It is mostly just mounting drives. I know that it is dangerous to allow the su access, but it is kind of a pain to have to go to the CL, su to root, then execute the script. I was hoping to just be able to click on it.

I guess it probably isn't worth the security hole though.

[Stuka]

Actually, unless I've lost my mind (which is always possible), you can set a drive to be user-mountable by setting up fstab correctly. I can't tell you how to do it, but I'm sure that the man pages can help!

[Strike]

Just put "user" in the fourth field in /etc/fstab ...

[sym]

Thanks! :)