Switching to other users without supplying password

[Yeo Khian Wei]

Hi
I have a question here. If I were to switch to other users without supplying password, can I still use the su command? If I'm not able to perform that using su, what are the ways that I can use to fulfill my need? Thanks

Cheers,

Khian Wei

[Nicolas Dumeige]

Hello,

root doesn't need to provide password in order to log or issue a command as another user.

If you need to do various task, use this kind of syntax :
su - user -c "command"
su - user2 -c "other_command"

Cheers

Nicolas

[Yeo Khian Wei]

Oh...maybe I should make myself clearer. I want to switch from a non-root user to another non-root user without supplying password. So does su command still take care of that?

Regards
Khian Wei

[Nicolas Dumeige]

No su won't accept it.

1) If all users have something in commun, have you consider using group privilege ? That's the most natural way to do it.

2) If you still want to log without password, use rsh with .rhost or ssh with a null passphrase against localhost.

[Johan Lorimier]

Hi,

use the .rhosts facility, and su will no not ask any password

.rhosts file of the user you want to be :

servernanme username_who_login


Johan

[Yeo Khian Wei]

Both users are not of the same group nor can I make them the same group.
Using rhosts facility, I thought that is only implemented if you are accessing different nodes? U mean u can use it within the same node?

Regards
Khian Wei

[Nicolas Dumeige]

Yes

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi,
About your last reply, I dont know about su but it works for rlogin:
rlogin -l , hostname being the box itself...

About you su problem I would recommend you to use su:
You can get sudo from:

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/sudo-1.6.7p5/

or the main sudo site if you wish to get the latest version or compile yourself:

http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/

It does exactly what you wish (that is if you give the good option NOPASSWD... read the man pages and look at the samples)

Good luck
All the best

Victor

[Yeo Khian Wei]

Hi
I have another restriction, that is due to security reasons, I will not be able to use the .rhosts file. So does that mean that sudo is the only way out here?

Thanks

Khian Wei

[hein coulier]

in sudo you can configure

youruser ALL = (targetuser) /usr/bin/ksh

you can become the other user with the command

sudo -u targetuser /usr/bin/ksh