Hi, I'm using solaris, and I was wondering how I would give a user admin privileges? On what I've found on the net they say to change the user's id to '0'. But my root user is already 0, so I'm a little confused on what the proper method is. Thanks

Quote: Original post by johnnyBravo
Hi, I'm using solaris, and I was wondering how I would give a user admin privileges?

On what I've found on the net they say to change the user's id to '0'.
But my root user is already 0, so I'm a little confused on what the proper method is.

Thanks

The proper way is "Not to". Literally.

Instead, you want to give the user the ability to escalate their privilidges part of the time, but leave them as an ordinary user most of the time. In comes Sudo.

In case you've never used it, Sudo gives users the ability to do super-user things (sudo literally translates to SuperUser DO). I'm not sure that it actually ships with Solaris, but installing it should be a breeze (as it is with other Unicies). (In fact, a lot of Unicies will ship with the root user disabled, and the first user added will get sudoers root privilidge).

Google sudo in solaris. That should take care of you.

Ah I see, so if I were to give a user admin privs, it would be the same as allowing root remote access?

Yes I've heard of sudo, I've used it with Ubuntu once, but doesn't come with solaris.

Thanks

Quote:
Ah I see, so if I were to give a user admin privs, it would be the same as allowing root remote access?

If you want the user to be able to connect to your system from a remote machine, you need a server or daemon running on your machine. Most common on linux is the ssh daemon (sshd).
If you have this daemon running on your system, any user with a login on your system can log in from a remote machine. They dont need any special prevlieges to do so though. Just a username and password on your system.
If you also give that user root privilegies, he/she will have root access aswell.

I'm actually using ssh to connect, learned about that not too long ago :)


although I'm probably going to use sudo for admin privileges, I'm just curious what do I have to do to give a user root privileges?

Thanks

You can try this.
Pretty much what you said.
The etc/passwd file may have a different name on solaris though.

Thanks alot.

This link is better... It looks like you have to set both user and group to 0.
I have never tried it myself so Im not sure, but the other link only set the user to 0, and someone said that didnt work.

Ah k, that makes alot of sense.

When I was logged into my normal user, I was able to enter 'su root' and then the password. Isn't this equivilent to allowing remote access to root?

Like are there any issues about this that is covered somewhere, eg how to prevent people from doing such?

Thanks

Quote:
When I was logged into my normal user, I was able to enter 'su root' and then the password. Isn't this equivilent to allowing remote access to root?

If you give a user root privilegies, he/she can do root only operations without knowing the root password.
The su command require you to know the root password. Thats the only difference I know of.

In some sense, what you say is true, and thats why both giving away root's password and giving a user root privilegies is bad for security ^^