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Re: [LUG] xdm chooser, also non-root shutdown

On Friday 19 Sep 2003 2:22 am, Keith wrote:
> Related to this, it would be nice to have a simple way for a "normal"
> user to shut down the local machine, which isn't up to running a

man shutdown
shutdown can be called from init(8) when the  magic  keys  CTRL-ALT-DEL
       are  pressed,  by  creating  an appropriate entry in /etc/inittab. This
       means that everyone who has physical access to the console keyboard can
       shut  the system down. To prevent this, shutdown can check to see if an
       authorized user is logged in on one of the virtual consoles.  If  shut-
       down  is  called  with  the  -a argument (add this to the invocation of
       shutdown in /etc/inittab), it checks to  see  if  the  file  /etc/shut-
       down.allow  is  present.  It then compares the login names in that file
       with the list of people that are logged in on a virtual  console  (from
       /var/run/utmp). Only if one of those authorized users or root is logged
       in, it will proceed. Otherwise it will write the message

       shutdown: no authorized users logged in

       to the (physical) system console. The format of /etc/shutdown.allow  is
       one user name per line. Empty lines and comment lines (prefixed by a #)
       are allowed. Currently there is a limit of 32 users in this file.

       Note that if /etc/shutdown.allow is not present,  the  -a  argument  is
       ignored.

So making it SUID might not be enough. Try each.
(It's /sbin/shutdown - halt is just an alias.)

> full-blown desk-top (KDE or Gnome) with this facility built in. From a
> simpler window manager the user must, first open a terminal (or switch
> to a text screen), then su to root (meaning that they could wreak untold
> havoc!), then execute "halt". I could write a script to do this along
> with an "Are you really sure?" warning, but first I need some way of
> getting "halt" to work for a non-root user. It works in Gnome so there
> must be a way. (Sorry to be so stupid, this is one bit of Linux that
> still has me baffled).
>
> Keith (Bailey)
>
>
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-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk
http://www.dclug.org.uk

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