Ubuntu – Run Bash Script as Root

First Question

• If you dont want to enter password everytime,then you should edit sudoers file.

  sudo visudo

• Then add the following line at the end of the file.

  %username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

  

• Now if you enter sudo followed by the command it wont prompt you to enter password.

Second Question

• For your second question you can add that command sudo vpnc to startup applications.

• To add that command in startup applications Goto System → Preferences → Startup Applications.

  

Your current edits to /etc/sudoers effectively let user1, user2, user3, and reporter perform any action as root (since running su lets you become root)! You almost certainly do not want this. And this doesn't help your current problem at all, because you don't want those users to run something with an alternate identity, you want root to run something with an alternate identity. Before proceeding, I recommend getting rid of those lines from /etc/sudoers (edit it with visudo of course) unless you're absolutely sure that's what you want.

If you're a non-root user and you run this, you will always be asked for a password:

su reporter -c "cd /path/to/directorywithscript && bash runwebserver.sh >> /dev/null 2>&1&"

But when root runs that, it should simply succeed (assuming it worked before on Oracle Enterprise Server and the only relevant difference is that root login is disabled on Ubuntu).

When you put that line in rc.local, in any GNU/Linux distribution, including Ubuntu, it is run as root. It should just work. When you run it from the command-line, it will not work. But in rc.local, it should just work.

If you want to test it from the command-line, give yourself a root shell of the kind pretty similar to rc.local's environment:

sudo -i

(This simulates an initial root login shell. Normally, for a root shell, use sudo -s. And of course, to run a command ... with sudo, just use sudo ....)

su -c and sudo take different syntax, so if you did want to make that command use sudo instead of su, you'd have to make additional changes. The easiest way is probably:

sudo -u reporter bash -c "cd /path/to/directorywithscript && ./runwebserver.sh >> /dev/null 2>&1&"

However, I emphasize that you do not need to convert su commands to sudo for them to run properly out of rc.local.

In Ubuntu, unlike Oracle Enterprise Server, logging in as root is disabled by default (and you almost certainly shouldn't enable it). But su still works when run by root. su also works for a non-root user changing identity to another non-root user.

If you have this line in rc.local and it's not working, the reason isn't issues of sudo vs. su. In that case, something else is going wrong. For us to troubleshoot it, you'd have to provide the contents of runwebserver.sh.

Finally, please note that bash runwebserver.sh >> /dev/null 2>&1& is rather inelegant. It's simpler to understand (and, much less importantly, looks nicer) to use bash runwebserver.sh &>> /dev/null. You said this runs last in rc.local, so you don't have to use & to background it.

However, you should consider if you really want to suppress standard error as well as standard output (as you're currently doing). Presumably if something is written to standard error then it's either important or can be suppressed by altering your web server's verbosity settings.