Re: The right way to power off a computer as non-root
Thomas Deselaers wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I use my computer as a workstation and thus I think it would be a good idea
>to be able to switch it of as user without being root.
>I had two ideas of making this possible. The one is to make it sudo-able and
>the other is to put the executable into a special group (e.g. poweroffer)
>and then make the binaries suid-root executable for this group and put the
>users which ought to be allowed to poweroff the workstation into this group.
>
>Of course this would be possible with gdm, but due to some other problems
>with gdm I reported a time ago which I still have not fixed I don't want to
>use gdm.
Bad solution is to include /sbin in the users' path, then make shutdown et.
al. SUID root (please never resort to doing this. This is a BAD solution).
The solutions you offered are far better than the BAD solution. However,
I don't like the idea of making more binaries suid root. Better stick with
sudo than suid root.
If you're not adamant to use gdm (though I think that for all its worth,
gdm is pretty versatile and useful. I didn't encounter any problem with it),
a less lazy soln is stick with CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot the machine. Now how
to halt the machine - use the powerful bootloader GRUB.
#grub menu file: /boot/grub/menu.lst
#assuming root is first disk, first partition
timeout -1
title Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1
#halt the computer
title shutdown thy PC
halt
The laziest way is to CTRL-ALT-DEL and hit the power button after all's done.
Paolo Falcone
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www.edsamail.com
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