How can I request elevated permissions in a bash script's begin and let it go at the end? - bash

I have a script (myscript.sh) which runs a few commands which need elevated privileges (i.e. needs to run with sudo).
Script is quite complex, but to demonstrate it is like below:
#!/bin/bash
echo "hello"
command1_which_needs_sudo
echo "hello2"
command2_which_needs_sudo
echo "hello3"
...
If I run it as a normal user without the required privileges:
$ ./myscript.sh
hello
must be super-user to perform this action
However if I run it with the correct privileges, it will work fine:
$ sudo ./myscript.sh
hello
hello2
hello3
Can I somehow achieve to run myscript.sh without sudo, and make the script requesting the elevated privileges only once in the beginning (and pass it back once it has finished)?
So obviously, sudo command1_which_needs_sudo will not be good, as command2 also need privileges.
How can I do this if I don't want to create another file, and due to script complexity I also don't want to do this with heredoc syntax?

If your main concern is code clarity, using wrapper functions can do a lot of good.
# call any named bash function under sudo with arbitrary arguments
run_escalated_function() {
local function_name args_q
function_name=$1; shift || return
printf -v args_q '%q ' "$#"
sudo bash -c "$(declare -f "$function_name"); $function_name $args_q"
}
privileged_bits() {
command1_which_needs_sudo
echo "hello2"
command2_which_needs_sudo
}
echo "hello"
run_escalated_function privileged_bits
echo "hello3"

If you want to run the script with root privileges without having to type sudo in the terminal nor having to type the password more than once then you can use:
#!/bin/bash
if [ "$EUID" -ne 0 ]
then
exec sudo -s "$0" "$#"
fi
echo "hello"
command1_which_needs_sudo
echo "hello2"
command2_which_needs_sudo
echo "hello3"
# ...
sudo -k
Update:
If your goal is to execute one part of the script with sudo rights then using a quoted here‑document is probably the easiest solution; there won't be any syntax issues because the current shell won't expand anything in it.
#!/bin/bash
echo "hello"
sudo -s var="hello2" <<'END_OF_SUDO'
command1_which_needs_sudo
echo "$var"
command2_which_needs_sudo
END_OF_SUDO
sudo -k
echo "hello3"
#...
remark: take notice that you can use external values in the here-document script by setting varname=value in the sudo command.

Related

Redirect copy of stdin to file from within bash script itself

In reference to https://stackoverflow.com/a/11886837/1996022 (also shamelessly stole the title) where the question is how to capture the script's output I would like to know how I can additionally capture the scripts input. Mainly so scripts that also have user input produce complete logs.
I tried things like
exec 3< <(tee -ia foo.log <&3)
exec <&3 <(tee -ia foo.log <&3)
But nothing seems to work. I'm probably just missing something.
Maybe it'd be easier to use the script command? You could either have your users run the script with script directly, or do something kind of funky like this:
#!/bin/bash
main() {
read -r -p "Input string: "
echo "User input: $REPLY"
}
if [ "$1" = "--log" ]; then
# If the first argument is "--log", shift the arg
# out and run main
shift
main "$#"
else
# If run without log, re-run this script within a
# script command so all script I/O is logged
script -q -c "$0 --log $*" test.log
fi
Unfortunately, you can't pass a function to script -c which is why the double-call is necessary in this method.
If it's acceptable to have two scripts, you could also have a user-facing script that just calls the non-user-facing script with script:
script_for_users.sh
--------------------
#!/bin/sh
script -q -c "/path/to/real_script.sh" <log path>
real_script.sh
---------------
#!/bin/sh
<Normal business logic>
It's simpler:
#! /bin/bash
tee ~/log | your_script
The wonderful thing is your_script can be a function, command or a {} command block!

Allow user input in second command in bash pipe

I'm looking for how I might allow user input in a second command in a bash statement and I'm not sure how to go about it. I'd like to be able to provide a one-liner for someone to be able to install my application, but part of that application process requires asking some questions.
The current script setup looks like:
curl <url/to/bootstrap.sh> | bash
and then boostrap.sh does:
if [ $UID -ne 0 ]; then
echo "This script requires root to run. Restarting the script under root."
exec sudo $0 "$#"
exit $?
fi
git clone <url_to_repo> /usr/local/repo/
bash /usr/local/repo/.setup/install_system.sh
which in turn calls a python3 script that asks for input.
I know that the the curl in the first line is using stdin and so that might make what I'm asking impossible and that it has to be two lines to ever work:
wget <url/to/boostrap.sh>
bash bootstrap.sh
You can restructure your script to run this way:
bash -c "$(curl -s http://0.0.0.0//test.bash 2>/dev/null)"
foo
wololo:a
a
My test.bash is really just
#!/bin/bash
echo foo
python -c 'x = raw_input("wololo:");print(x)'`
To demonstrate that stdin can be read from in this way. Sure it creates a subshell to take care of curl but it allows you to keep reading from stdin as well.

Bash Echo passing to another script, not working as expected

I created a bash file to write some content into a file, which should be written into another users home directory, with the users account.
It should work the follwing:
sudo ./USER.sh run 49b087ef9cb6753f "echo test > test.txt"
Basically USER.sh contains this:
if [ "$1" = "run" ]; then
cd /home/${2}/;
sudo -u ${2} ${3};
fi
But it does not write any stuff into test.txt, it just direct executes the Bash command, instead of writing it into the file.
Did anyone got an Idea how I can fix it, that it does actually write the Content into a file instead of direct executing it?
Thanks.
You want:
sudo -u "$2" sh -c "$3"
The curlies are useless. They don't prevent splitting and file-globbing.
The double quotes do.
With the double quotes "$3" expands to "echo test > test.txt" (without them, it's "echo" "test" ">" and "test.txt"). This needs to be executed by a shell, hence the sh -c (a POSIX shell is sufficient in this case and if it's dash, it'll start a few ms faster than bash does).
You could also do:
if [ "$1" = "run" ]; then
sudo -u "$2" --set-home sh -c "$(printf '%s\n' 'cd "$HOME"' "$3")"
fi
which would be more robust in the general case where user home directories aren't necessarily /home/$username, but whatever the appropriate field in /etc/passwd is.

How to pass an option in a bash script command?

I have a script starting with:
#!/usr/bin/sudo bash
It does a non instant processing and is not meant to be interrupted, so I would like to add the -b option to sudo to run it in background after the password has been entered.
#!/usr/bin/sudo -b bash
However, the script does not accept the option. Am I doing something wrong ? Can one even pass an option that way ? And if not, why ?
Thank you in advance.
Let's ask shellcheck:
$ shellcheck yourscript
In yourscript line 1:
#!/usr/bin/sudo -b bash
^-- SC2096: On most OS, shebangs can only specify a single parameter.
A fair workaround is to have the script invoke itself with sudo based on a flag:
#!/bin/bash
if [[ $1 == "-n" ]]
then
echo "Processing as $(whoami)"
else
printf "Option -n not specified: invoking sudo -b %q -n:" "$0"
exec sudo -b "$0" -n
fi
This has the additional benefit of letting you run yourscript -n directly to not invoke sudo and not run in the background. This allows things like sudo yourscript -n && mail -s "Processing complete" you#example.com which would not be possible if the script unconditionally backgrounded itself.
Caveat: sudo "$0" is not a bullet proof way of reinvoking the current script.

Why can't I redirect text to a text file?

I'm writing a bash shell script that has to be run with admin permissions (sudo).
I'm running the following commands
sudo -u $SUDO_USER touch /home/$SUDO_USER/.kde/share/config/kcmfonts > /dev/null
sudo -u $SUDO_USER echo "[General]\ndontChangeAASettings=true\nforceFontDPI=96" >> /home/$SUDO_USER/.kde/share/config/kcmfonts
The first command succeeds and creates the file. However the second command keeps erroring with the following:
cannot create /home/username/.kde/share/config/kcmfonts: Permission denied
I can't understand why this keeps erroring on permissions. I'm running the command as the user who invoked sudo so I should have access to write to this file. The kcmfonts file is created successfully.
Can someone help me out?
Consider doing this:
echo "some text" | sudo -u $SUDO_USER tee -a /home/$SUDO_USER/filename
The tee command can assist you with directing the output to the file. tee's -a option is for append (like >>) without it you'll clobber the file (like >).
You don't need to execute the left side with elevated privs (although it is just echo, this is a good thing to form as a habit), you only need the elevated privs for writing to the file. So with this command you're only elevating permissions for tee.
sudo -u $SUDO_USER echo "some text" >> /home/$SUDO_USER/filename
sudo executes the command echo "some text" as `$SUDO_USER".
But the redirection is done under your account, not under the $SUDO_USER account. Redirection is handled by the shell process, which is yours and is not under the control of sudo.
Try this:
sudo -u $SUDO_USER sh -c 'echo "some text" >> /home/$SUDO_USER/filename'
That way, the sh process will be executed by $SUDO_USER, and that's the process that will handle the redirection (and will write to the output file).
Depending on the complexity of the command, you may need to play some games with escaping quotation marks and other special characters. If that's too complex (which it may well be), you can create a script:
$ cat foo.sh
#!/bin/sh
echo "some text" >> /home/$SUDO_USER/filename
$ sudo -u $SUDO_USER ./foo.sh
Now it's the ./foo.sh command (which executes as /bin/sh ./foo.sh) that will run under the $SUDO_USER account, and it should have permission to write to the output file.

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