I need my webserver to run the /usr/sbin/smartctl command, how can I do this?
I tried adding the line -
***%wwwrun ALL=/usr/sbin/smartctl
to sudoers (through visudo), but it still doesn’t run.
Any ideas?
Thanks 
Hmm, I also tried chmod 755 /usr/sbin/smartctl and the following lines in sudoers -
%www ALL=/usr/sbin/smartctl
and then…
***www ALL=NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/smartctl --all /dev/sda
but still nothing!
Do I need to reboot after changing sudoers?
There are some things I do not quite understand in your post. Maybe when they are a bit clearer we can carry on.
To begin with in my system::
boven:~ # ls -l /usr/sbin/smartctl
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 200548 Oct 10 2007 /usr/sbin/smartctl
boven:~ #
Was this not the case in your system that you changed it to this?
The above means also that every user can execute this file. So why do you say *wwwrun *can not? (in other words, you did not provide us with any error message). I can:
henk@boven:~> /usr/sbin/smartctl -h
smartctl version 5.37 [i686-suse-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
Usage: smartctl [options] device
......
I used *man smartctl *to see what it i supposed to do. It acts on a harddisk drive. It uses for this of course the device special files like /dev/sda. But these can only be read by *root *and users attached to group disk (when your system is not fouled up).
henk@boven:~> /usr/sbin/smartctl -i /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.37 [i686-suse-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
Smartctl open device: /dev/sda failed: Permission denied
henk@boven:~>
But as root:
smartctl version 5.37 [i686-suse-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: Hitachi HDT725032VLA380
Serial Number: VFJ201R23XUEXW
Firmware Version: V54OA7BA
User Capacity: 320,072,933,376 bytes
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: 7
ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 1
Local Time is: Mon Sep 14 15:18:24 2009 CEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
boven:~ #
Now this last is what you already expected I suppose.
Why not try this first with another user then wwwrun, so you can test in a normal terminal window if the call to *smartctl *works for this normal user?
growbag wrote:
> I need my webserver to run the -/usr/sbin/smartctl- command, how can I
> do this?
>
> I tried adding the line -
>
> -*%wwwrun ALL=/usr/sbin/smartctl
> *-
> to sudoers (through visudo), but it still doesn’t run.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks
A lot of times, wwwrun does NOT have a shell. Try temporarily giving it a login shell and see if that fixes things. If it does, you’ll have to
decide if that’s worth it or not.
Thanks for the replies.
It was supposed to run from a php script, and the script gave no error output apart from the obscure - “Nothing found” message.
But I gave up and simply used hddtemp instead, it seems much easier and gives me the necessary info.
But thanks for taking the time to reply.