Sudo from scripts

[Dave Ihnat]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 05:47:53AM +0000, g wrote:
> as a question of curiousness, and 'wat' from svr5 days, have you tried
> giving ownership of script to root?

I would suggest submitting it as a root cron job.  But go over the
script very, very carefully to make sure there are no security holes.

> also, if you want backup to run only after you are logged off, or after
> you have done something needing backup, have script check for 'filename'
> and then delete 'filename' as part of closing. this way, you can run
> 'touch filename' to enable.

One thing to remember about cleanup in scripts--use trap.  E.g.,

  TEMPFILE="/usr/tmp/foo.$$";
  ...
  trap "rm -f $TEMPFILE" 0;

It's useful for many other things, of course, but a very common use for
trap is to specify actions on exit.

Cheers,
--
	Dave Ihnat
	President, DMINET Consulting, Inc.
	dihnat at dminet.com