Users activating a ppp link

[mastersibn]

Hardly a monumental achievement or complex application of something, but I noticed today that if your /etc/sudoers file contains your name as such:


<name> ALL = (optional: "NOPASSWD"): /bin/su -c kppp


then you can initiate a ppp link by typing:
sudo su -c kppp.


This isn't a security hazard that I'm aware of, as the only way you can run su this way is if it's followed with a -c kppp. Please inform me if I'm wrong, but it's pretty groovy being able to initiate a connection without giving out my root password every single time... http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

ONE note: You have to be
A) Using kppp
B) Have an already working connection
for this to work. http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/frown.gif


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For just a few MB of space, you too can give one of these poor helpless penguins a home on your hard disk. For some precious processor cycles, you can feed this innocent creature for months or years before it gets a cold.

Use Linux. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to the world.

[This message has been edited by mastersibn (edited 27 September 2000).]

[zGoRNz]

you should just do kppp not su -c kppp

su switches user to root and runs the program, if su is run as root it doesn't ask for the password
sudo runs that command as root

so you just need kppp

you can replace kppp with whatever you use (ppp-go for slakers (go slak!));

- GoRN Out -

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Dunt Dunt Duh...
GoRN To The Rescue,
Yet Again
- GoRN Out -

[Klosters]

Apropos to this thread(I hope)I installed SuSE 7.0 recently. Good ol' kppp won't work as user. It does as root, but that's moot. Using kinternet, and wvdial, I connected successfully to my ISP, no prob. The difficulty was that I got kicked offline every 2.5 to 13 minutes, without fail. Aggravating. Spent a good deal of time modifying ppp, pppd and kppp. No help.

It was the wvdial program. After finally reading the man for wvdial.conf, I changed the "Idle Seconds= 180" line to "Idle Seconds= 0." Works like a charm. I never used wvdial in SuSE 6.1 and 6.2. Kppp worked fine in the older releases.

Maybe this will aid a newcomer to "modern" SuSE. Release 7.0 is quite a bit different than 6.2. I never believed that an "automagic" installation would ever work in Linux. I was wrong!