Re: A reboot user

[neil <neilcuk aol com>]

gary stainburn ringways co uk wrote:

> On Friday 30 Apr 2004 1:21 pm, WipeOut wrote:
>  
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have a colocated server and when I have to get them to reboot it they
> > just hit the power switch which can't be good for filesystems and
> > databases..
> >
> > Is there a way I can create a user account that will reboot the server
> > on login?
> >
> > This way I can give them a user account and they simply login with that
> > account and it reboots the server..
> >
> > I am guessing I need to create a login script or something similar but I
> > am not sure how to get the system to execute the script at login if that
> > is the way to do it..
> >
> > Thnaks..
> >    
>
> Try creating a passwd entry with a uid and gid of '0' (same as root) and set 
> the path for the shell to be a program which simply calls shutdown with the 
> relevent parameters.
>
> The program will be run when the user logs in, and the user will be logged out 
> again as soon as the program exits.
>
> (Not tried it though)
>  
IMHO it would be safer, cleaner and more practical - if you have no ssh 
access - to create a non priviledged user that can 'sudo reboot'. If you 
take a few minutes to read through the sudo man pages you'll find it can 
be a very useful tool indeed.

neil.