Is there a Linux application, served through telnet/ssh, like HP-UX’s SAM?

[Ivan Delany_1]

Is there a Linux application, served through telnet/ssh, like HP-UX’s SAM?

We are planning to migrate from HP-UX 11i v2 to Red Hat Linux ELS 5.1, but have the following problem:

We have quite a few HPUX users (and groups) that have access to certain areas of SAM. This gives them a structured menu system and also allows us to grant 'run as root' permissions for certain (mainly custom) tasks.

As the application housed within the HP-UX OS is accessed via telnet/ssh, I do not want to grant access to Linux via the desktop (VNC etc) just for this purpose. Hence my asking if there is a telnet served app.

Anything that meets the following three requirements may be of use to us:
* Has an easily manageable and configurable menu structure.
* Spawned processes (scripts) can be individually specified to be executed under the root id.
* Is secure and users can be restricted to disable them from 'breaking out' to the command prompt.

I've had a look around the Internet but cannot find anything that meets these requirements, and I don’t fancy writing one. Perhaps there is nothing out there, but any helpful suggestions will be very much appreciated.

Thanks

Ivan

[Heironimus]

There have been a number of applications that tried to do it. I have not yet seen even one that was acceptable. I'm not a huge fan of SAM, but at least it works.

For running specific commands as root sudo is probably your best bet. It's widely used on many UNIX platforms (including HP-UX).

For a broader administrative interface webmin seems to be the least awful option, but it's web-based rather than console.

[Ivan Delany_1]

Thanks Heironimus.

However, webmin seems OK for administrators but not general users (who I want to give access to scripts via a menu).

Ivan

[Ivan Delany_1]

Also, I should have mentioned that I am aware of sudo and although it will give [root] access to scripts we would still be presenting a 'scary' Linux prompt to our dear users.