Sudo in a cron job question

[Tim Wunder]

On 2/19/2003 1:56 PM, someone claiming to be Kurt Wall wrote:
> Feigning erudition, Tim Wunder wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> % Um, no. I *am* trying to run the working script via a cron job, as my 
> % normal user. But it don't work. I've configured sudo so that it doesn't 
> % ask for a password when my user tries to run 'sudo checkinstall'. When I 
> % put that in my script and execute it from the command line, checkinstall 
> % runs and I don't need to enter my password. When the script is executed 
> % as a cron job, sudo asks for a password, which never comes, so the 
> % script fails.
> 
> So, you're using "authenticate NOPASSWD" flag or some such?
> 

Something like that.. the relevant portion of my /etc/sudoers file

User_Alias      ADMINS = <myuser>
Cmnd_Alias      INSTALL = /usr/local/bin/checkinstall -*[A-z]*
ADMINS  ALL=(ALL)       NOPASSWD: INSTALL

 > Can you run invoked sudo with the -l option? See the discussion of
 > "listpw" in the sudoers(5) man page. See also the -v option.
 >

I'll look at '-l' and '-v', thanks. I'm a sudo neophyte, so pointers are 
most welcome.

<time passes as tim putzes with this and that...>

Kurt, you're a wonderful person!
For kicks, I added '/usr/bin/sudo -l >sudo.lst' to my script, which told 
me that my user could execute the following commands on this host:
     (ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/checkinstall -*[A-z]*

which got me thinking... damn, that *is* the command I'm trying to 
run... then it hit me: I've got the command specified in my script as 
only 'checkinstall', not '/usr/local/bin/checkinstall'. One quick 
modification to my script, and there's now joy in Mudville.

I guess that just goes to show you that explicit should be used in 
scripts...

Thanks,
Tim