Recipe 5.15 Killing Processes via sudo
5.15.1 Problem
Allow a user to
kill a certain
process but no others.
5.15.2 Solution
Create a script that kills the process by looking up its
PID
dynamically and safely. Add the script to
/etc/sudoers.
5.15.3 Discussion
Because we don't know a process's
PID until runtime, we cannot solve this problem with
/etc/sudoers alone, which is written before
runtime. You need a script to deduce the PID for killing.For example, to let users restart
sshd
:
#!/bin/sh
pidfile=/var/run/sshd.pid
sshd=/usr/sbin/sshd
# sanity check that pid is numeric
pid=`/usr/bin/perl -ne 'print if /^\d+$/; last;' $pidfile`
if [ -z "$pid" ]
then
echo "$0: error: non-numeric pid $pid found in $pidfile" 1>&2
exit 1
fi
# sanity check that pid is a running process
if [ ! -d "/proc/$pid" ]
then
echo "$0: no such process" 1>&2
exit 1
fi
# sanity check that pid is sshd
if [ `readlink "/proc/$pid/exe"` != "$sshd" ]
then
echo "$0: error: attempt to kill non-sshd process" 1>&2
exit 1
fi
kill -HUP "$pid"
Call the script /usr/local/bin/sshd-restart and
let users invoke it via sudo:
# /etc/sudoers:
smith ALL = /usr/local/bin/sshd-restart "
The
empty double-quotes prevent arguments from
being passed to the script. [Recipe 5.9]Our script carefully signals only the parent sshd
process, not its child processes for SSH sessions already in
progress. If you prefer to kill all processes
with a given name, use the
pidof
command:
# kill -USR1 `pidof mycommand`
or the skill command:
# skill -USR1 mycommand
5.15.4 See Also
kill(1), proc(5), pidof(8), skill(1), readlink(1).