Re: Secure Web-Based Administration

From: Bill Weiss (houdini@nmt.edu)
Date: 01/21/03

  • Next message: Brian Hatch: "Re: Secure Web-Based Administration" 
    Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 19:50:12 -0700
From: Bill Weiss <houdini@nmt.edu>
To: focus-linux@securityfocus.com

    Ryan(ryan@vbnet.net)@Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 09:59:44AM -0500:
    > I would like to create some web pages/scripts (probably using PHP since I
    > use it for a lot of other things) to assist me in administering my linux
    > machine. What are some ways that I can execute certain administrative
    > commands (such as ifconfig,iwconfig,route,scripts in my /etc/init.d/
    > directory, etc...) as root?
    > I'm fairly familiar with the different access-control methods available to
    > me to restrict access to these pages. I will definitely be using SSL with
    > a self-signed certificate. I'm just not sure how to get my web server
    > (which doesn't run as root and I want to keep it that way) to execute
    > these commands with superuser privileges.
    > Thanks

    Set up sudo to allow the web server user ("apache", maybe) to run
    those commands as root without a password. 

    -- 
Bill Weiss

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