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Amey Jah
Asked: 2011-06-20 10:43:55 +0800 CST

How to give shutdown privileges to a user?

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I am using Ubuntu 11.04. I want to run a script which checks for a running process and shuts down the system when that process ends. To do this, the user requires shutdown access so that the script may be executed without requiring a password.

I referred to this page and added the text in my sudoers file. However, it's still asking me the password whenever I execute sudo shutdown -h now. Also, I get an error saying root privileges are required, when I execute shutdown without sudo.

My sudoers file looks something like this.

# Cmnd alias specification
Cmnd_Alias      SHUTDOWN = /sbin/shutdown

# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
myusername    ALL = NOPASSWD: SHUTDOWN

How can I give permission to a user to execute the shutdown command without having to manually enter the password?

Thanks.

11.04

4 Answers

  1. I did it like in this answer, works flawlessly for me. Maybe your approach misses the visudo part?

    Open a command line and type:

    sudo visudo

    In the File that opens add the following line at the end:

    yourusername ALL=NOPASSWD: /sbin/halt

    Then exit the editor and safe it (CTRL+x).

    Now you can shut down your computer from the command line, e.g. after you download something:

    wget UrlOfTheFileYouWantToDownload ; sudo halt
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  2. Best Answer

    You can shut down or restart using HAL or ConsoleKit which will not require you enter an username/password:

    HAL (older Ubuntu versions):

    dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.Hal /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.SystemPowerManagement.Shutdown

    ConsoleKit (newer Ubuntu versions, tested on Ubuntu 11.04):

    dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit /org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Manager org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Manager.Stop
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  3. Some time ago I did this by setting the suid (Set User ID). This makes the program execute as the owner of the file, not the user running it. Since shutdown is owned by root this should let you shutdown without sudo.

    chmod u+s /sbin/shutdown

    There are security implications though since anyone can then run shutdown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setuid

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  4. It sounds like you'd want to run the script itself as root. If you want to run a script that waits for something to finish and then powers down your computer, then you'd just run the script with sudo. That will ask your password when you run the script, but then the script itself is free to shutdown the system without any further intervention.

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