Bash – sudo command after long sleep call without re-prompting sudo password

bashbashrcsudo

I'm trying to write a simple bash function that sleeps X-number of mins and then runs a system sleep command (for me it's sudo pm-suspend since I'm on Ubuntu) right now the function looks like this:

function sleepin {
  sleep $(bc <<< $1*60); sudo pm-suspend
}

The first argument is after how many mins the sleep is supposed to happen. The problem is that after the sleep the script prompts me for the sudo password.

How should I re-write the script so that it doesn't prompt me for the sudo password after the sleep?

(I've tried to call sudo sleepin 30 but it still prompts me for the password. Note that if the sleep call is small enough bash doesn't prompts for password, but for a longer sleep it will..)

Best Answer

As Mat suggested, you can allow the user to run pm-suspend without a password.

Run sudo visudo

Add youruser ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /path/to/pm-suspend

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Sudo Hangs Indefinitely Without Prompting for Password

A kernel "upgrade" was the cause of this calamity. Since I installed my own, later kernel from kernel.ubuntu.com, when a "new" kernel of a different minor version was installed, everything in the world got messed up.

For my purposes, I had manually installed kernel 3.7.1, whereas the kernel provided by the Ubuntu distribution is kernel 3.2.0. This, for some reason, really botched things up, despite the fact that I was running 3.7.1 from an EFI boot and there simply isn't a way to boot into kernel 3.2.0. There are incompatibilities between kernel versions and the wireless driver, but an incompatibility with the wireless driver wouldn't cause everything to lock up and get messed up.

Next step for completely solving the problem would be completely preventing kernel updates from ever happening again. How can I do this? I've heard of doing it with dpkg --set-selections, but I'm not sure how to prevent updates to all linux-(headers,headers-generic,image,image-extra) packages, due to their naming:

linux-headers-3.2.0-36
linux-headers-3.2.0-36-generic
linux-image-3.2.0-36-generic

How do I block changes to all kernels starting with 3.2?

Way to run sudo without running another unneccessary command

What you are looking for is sudo -v. From the man page:

-v, --validate
          Update the user's cached credentials, authenticating the user
          if necessary.

(And the counterpart to explicitly remove the credentials: sudo -k)

How should I re-write the script so that it doesn't prompt me for the sudo password after the sleep?

Best Answer

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