2003-11-27
Sudo is a program that allows you to give yourself, or others access to run all, or a specific program with root access. To give someone full root access is easy by placing an entry in the /etc/sudoers file. Visudo is vi editor that is specifically designed to modify /etc/sudoers (which you do not want to modify by hand) with error checking. Invoke it like this:
# visudo (once invoked you will see a line like: "root ALL=(ALL) ALL" add the following line beneath it) ben ALL=(ALL) ALL
Save and exit visudo just like vi.
Now when ben needs root he can simply type:
$ sudo su
You can also allow certain people limited root access to certain applications. See the example /etc/sudoers file or see man sudoers(5) for examples.
