in reply to sudo from Apache

It might be impossible to find a password for www-data, because it is often a "pseudo-user" with no password that runs a web server. Only a privileged user can sudo to this user. Setting a password for such a user is a security risk.

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Re^2: sudo from Apache
by afoken (Chancellor) on Sep 03, 2011 at 07:34 UTC

    You don't need a password for www-data. sudo can be configured to allow one or more users to run one or more commands without any password. See the sudo documentation, especially man 5 sudoers.

    A line from my /etc/sudoers file, allowing every user to run the two scripts /service/fetchmail/wake and /service/fetchmail/status:

    %users  ALL = NOPASSWD: /service/fetchmail/wake,/service/fetchmail/sta
+tus

    [download]

    Replace %users with www-data and only the user www-data is able to run the scripts.

    Replace the script names with some other script names and obviously, the other scripts can be executed without entering a password.

    Combine both and www-data can run a mount script and a umount script that call the mount and umount commands with fixed parameters.

    Alexander

    --
    Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)
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