Freebsd – “su” when the password is unknown but you’re in “wheel” with “no password”

freebsdpasswordrootsudousers

I'm on FreeBsd 11. I have a user "user123" belonging to the group wheel and wheel has %wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL in /usr/local/etc/sudoers.

I don't know the password of root. However, I'm able to run "sudo" without one.

I've installed Postgresql and run it via "service start".

Now I want to log in as the postgresql user and create a database or other stuff:

$ su postgres
Password:


# or

$ su - postgres
Password:

But I don't know the password.

Is this the password of the user root or the user postgres? I don't know any of them. Is there a standard workaround for this?

Best Answer

If you want to login as postgres, and you have sudo access without password requirements, do:

sudo -iu postgres

The -i starts a login shell.

Related Solutions

KDE – Using Sudo on GUI Applications in Arch Linux

This looks like an intentional configuration in Arch Linux. See this for discussion with links to solutions.

The best tip there seems to be adding "DISPLAY XAUTHORITY" to to the "env_keep" defaults in /etc/sudoers.

Fedora has in /etc/sudoers the following and this allows sudo somexapp to succeed.

Defaults    env_reset
Defaults    env_keep =  "COLORS DISPLAY HOSTNAME HISTSIZE INPUTRC KDEDIR LS_COLORS"
Defaults    env_keep += "MAIL PS1 PS2 QTDIR USERNAME LANG LC_ADDRESS LC_CTYPE"
Defaults    env_keep += "LC_COLLATE LC_IDENTIFICATION LC_MEASUREMENT LC_MESSAGES"
Defaults    env_keep += "LC_MONETARY LC_NAME LC_NUMERIC LC_PAPER LC_TELEPHONE"
Defaults    env_keep += "LC_TIME LC_ALL LANGUAGE LINGUAS _XKB_CHARSET XAUTHORITY"

Sudo – Best Way to Add a User to the Sudoer Group

There are two (main) ways you can authorize a user to run commands as root via sudo:

declare that “Alice may run commands as root”;
declare that “Alice is a sysadmin” and that “sysadmins may run commands as root”.

The way to declare “Alice is a sysadmin” is to make her a member of the sysadmins group, but there is no standard name for the sysadmins group (nor any obligation that there is a sysadmins group). Some traditional Unix systems have a group called wheel, but often being in the wheel group is only a prerequisite for becoming root, and the user must also know the root password and run su (that's how BSD uses it, in particular). Some distributions, such as Ubuntu and Debian, include a group called sudo and a rule “members of the group sudo may run command as root” in their default configuration.

If /etc/sudoers (or a file in /etc/sudoers.d) contains a line like %sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL, then you can make a user a sudoer by adding them to the sudo group (adduser alice sudo). The name sudo isn't magical, you just have to match the entry in /etc/sudoers.

Never edit /etc/sudoers (or a file under /etc/sudoers.d) directly: if you make a syntax error, you would lock yourself out of root access. Always use visudo to edit that file. To choose the editor that visudo runs, set the VISUAL environment variable (or EDITOR, as long as VISUAL is unset). On a multiuser machine, using visudo has the additional advantage that it takes care of locking in case two administrators edit the file at the same time.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

KDE – Using Sudo on GUI Applications in Arch Linux

Sudo – Best Way to Add a User to the Sudoer Group

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