execute command as root user

[Alain Williams]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 12:37:06PM +0200, Martin Koeck wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I know this is more OS related and not so much nagios related, but I 
> thought maybe somebody has stumbled across this:
> 
> I need, on a critical failure that is trapped by nagios (this works for 
> me), to restart an application which I usually restart as root user on 
> this machine.
> 
> To be specific: Tomcat is giving up work now and then on this machine, I 
> can trap it, and need to restart it. Normally I do this by 
> /etc/init.d/tomcat restart -- but I need to be root for this, so nagios 
> cannot do this automatically for me, because it runs as nagios user.
> 
> What is the best way to approach this ? Changing the owner of the 
> tomcat-related startup files so that nagios can do it ? Writing a file 
> on-critical-error and restarting tomcat (as a cron-job), whenever that 
> file exists ? Something else ?

Use the 'sudo' command.
Alternately: write a short program in C, that is setuid root, that execs the init script.

You MUST think carefully about the security implications of doing this - put appropriate
checks in.

-- 
Alain Williams
Linux Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256  http://www.phcomp.co.uk/
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php
Chairman of UKUUG: http://www.ukuug.org/
#include <std_disclaimer.h>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
Still grepping through log files to find problems?  Stop.
Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >>  http://get.splunk.com/
_______________________________________________
Nagios-users mailing list
Nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users
::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. 
::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null