Running program as different user (without password)

**vkov_tinsky** · September 18th, 2008

Hi,

I'm trying to run a program as a different user (but not root) without being prompted for a password. I read up on sudoers and thought the following addition to /etc/sudoers would do the trick (where my user is vt and I want to run /usr/bin/top as user rawvb):

Code:

vt ALL=(rawvb) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/top

However when I run the following I still get prompted for a password:

Code:

sudo -u rawvb /usr/bin/top

I've searched these forums but couldn't find any threads detailing this (they all seem to be about running certain commands as root).

Regards,
VT

*** Edit ***
I found this thread which doesn't have a solution however.

**cdenley** · September 18th, 2008

Originally Posted by vkov_tinsky

Hi,

I'm trying to run a program as a different user (but not root) without being prompted for a password. I read up on sudoers and thought the following addition to /etc/sudoers would do the trick (where my user is vt and I want to run /usr/bin/top as user rawvb):

Code:

vt ALL=(rawvb) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/top

However when I run the following I still get prompted for a password:

Code:

sudo -u rawvb /usr/bin/top

I've searched these forums but couldn't find any threads detailing this (they all seem to be about running certain commands as root).

Regards,
VT

*** Edit ***
I found this thread which doesn't have a solution however.

That's odd, becuase this line works correctly for me

Code:

cdenley ALL=(rawvb) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/whoami

Code:

cdenley@ubuntu:~$ sudo -K
cdenley@ubuntu:~$ sudo -u rawvb whoami
rawvb

**vkov_tinsky** · September 19th, 2008

What can I say... I'm running Xubuntu 8.04 and all I have in /etc/sudoers is:

Code:

# /etc/sudoers
#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
#

Defaults	env_reset

# Uncomment to allow members of group sudo to not need a password
# %sudo ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# User privilege specification
root	ALL=(ALL) ALL
vt	ALL=(rawvb) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/top

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

And obviously when I run sudo -u rawvb top I get the password prompt cancelling which adds to /var/log/auth.log:

Code:

ogimogi sudo:       vt : pam_authenticate: Conversation error ; TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/vt ; USER=rawvb ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/top

The only possibly related thing I can think off is that I installed the libpam-gnome-keyring package (so automatically retrieve the key for my wireless connection upon login). Or do I maybe have to set something in System->Authorizations?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Regards,
VT