Update root crontab remotely for many systems by script - bash

I am trying to update the crontab file of 1000+ systems using a for loop from jump host.
The below doesn't work.
echo -e 'pass365\!\n' | sudo -S echo 'hello' >> /var/spool/cron/root
-bash: /var/spool/cron/root: Permission denied
I do have (ALL) ALL in the sudoers file.

This is another solution;
echo 'pass365\!' | sudo -S bash -c 'echo "hello">> /var/spool/cron/root'

The below worked for me.
echo 'pass365\!' | sudo -S echo 'hello' | sudo -S tee -a /var/spool/cron/root > /dev/null

Problem 1: You are trying to send the password via echo to sudo.
Problem 2: You can't use shell redirection in a sudo command like that.
Between the two of these, consider setting up ssh public key authorization and doing
ssh root#host "echo 'hello' \>\> /var/spool/cron/root"
You may eventually get sudo working but it will be so much more pain than this.

Related

Executing sudo command in bash script without displaying it

I'm executing a command with sudo from bash script, and I'm wondering how to prevent sudo from displaying anything on the screen
echo "mypassword" | sudo -S cp -u /scripts/.bashrc ~/ > /dev/null 2>&1
The result will be an output displaying: [sudo] password for username:
I want to hide that output..
now, before the first comment;
This isn't the safest way, since you're entering your password into the script, but this is strictly internal servers.
Run sudo --help, we can get answer from the parameter list:
-p, --prompt=prompt use the specified password prompt
Then,
echo "mypassword" | sudo -S --prompt="" cp -u /scripts/.bashrc ~/ > /dev/null 2>&1
may do the trick.

How to redirect to a file with a certain user for creating that file

Various times in my scripts I redirect output from the terminal to a file or something. Sometimes I'll specify a user for a command but that user doesn't work on the other side of the redirect.
sudo -i
# We are now the root user.
sudo -u abc echo 'Something...' > a_file.txt
Even though the echo is done as user abc the file will be created as root user.
I understand why this is happening, what I was hoping is that someone knows a way to make it work as desired so that the file a_file.txt gets created with the owner being user abc.
You can run multiple commands in a sudo shell and then all them are going to run under the same user:
sudo -u abc sh -c 'echo sth > a_file.txt'
Or you can use tee pipe:
sudo -u abc sthRequiringSudo | sudo -u abc tee a_file.txt >/dev/null
Or you can pass your commands to a sudo shell standard input:
sudo -u abc -s <<< "echo sth >a_file.txt"
You can even have the commands in multiple lines being sent to a sudo shell standard input:
sudo -u abc -s << EOF
echo sth >a_file.txt
echo sthelse >>a_file.txt
EOF

Bash: get output of sudo command on remote using SSH

I'm getting incredibly frustrated here. I simply want to run a sudo command on a remote SSH connection and perform operations on the results I get locally in my script. I've looked around for close to an hour now and not seen anything related to that issue.
When I do:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
OUT=$(ssh username#host "command" 2>&1 )
echo $OUT
Then, I get the expected output in OUT.
Now, when I try to do a sudo command:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
OUT=$(ssh username#host "sudo command" 2>&1 )
echo $OUT
I get "sudo: no tty present and no askpass program specified". Fair enough, I'll use ssh -t.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
OUT=$(ssh -t username#host "sudo command" 2>&1 )
echo $OUT
Then, nothing happens. It hangs, never asking for the sudo password in my terminal. Note that this happens whether I send a sudo command or not, the ssh -t hangs, period.
Alright, let's forget the variable for now and just issue the ssh -t command.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
ssh -t username#host "sudo command" 2>&1
Then, well, it works no problem.
So the issue is that ssh -t inside a variable just doesn't do anything, but I can't figure out why or how to make it work for the life of me. Anyone with a suggestion?
If your script is rather concise, you could consider this:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
ssh -t username#host "sudo command" 2>&1 \
| ( \
read output
# do something with $output, e.g.
echo "$output"
)
For more information, consider this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/15170225/10470287

Edit an privileged file via bash

I need to edit an privileged file using bash on Ubuntu 14.04
This simple command is not working:
sudo echo $someText >> $privilegedFile
I get this error:
Permission denied
I have no idea what is wrong with it.
Thanks.
The shell processes the redirection before it runs sudo, so $privilegedFile is still opened using the current user's permissions.
One workaround is to open the file with a program run by sudo rather than using redirections.
echo "$someText" | sudo tee -a "$privilegedFile"
Another is to start an entirely new shell with sudo and execute the full command in that shell.
sudo sh -c "echo '$someText' >> '$privilegedFile'"
You should try this:
sudo sh -c "echo $text >> $file"
do
sudo chmod u+xrw FILE
and
sudo nano FILE
Don't use echo for editing, try nano, gedit or vi.

Sudo not prompting for password Mac bash script

I am trying to write a script that appends a line to the /etc/hosts, which means I need sudoer privileges. However, if I run the script from the desktop it does not prompt for a password. I simply get permission denied.
Example script:
#!/bin/bash
sudo echo '131.253.13.32 www.google.com' >> /etc/hosts
dscacheutil -flushcache
A terminal pops up and says permission denied, but never actually prompts for the sudo password. Is there a way to fix this?
sudo doesn't apply to the redirection operator. You can use either echo | sudo tee -a or sudo bash -c 'echo >>':
echo 131.253.13.32 www.google.com | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts
sudo bash -c 'echo 131.253.13.32 www.google.com >> /etc/hosts'
What you are doing here is effectively:
Switch to root, and run echo
Switch back to yourself and try to append the output of sudo onto
/etc/hosts
That doesn't work because you need to be root when you're appending to /etc/hosts, not when you're running echo.
The simplest way to do this is
sudo bash -c "sudo echo '131.253.13.32 www.google.com' >> /etc/hosts"
which will run bash itself as root. However, that's not particularly safe, since you're now invoking a shell as root, which could potentially do lots of nasty stuff (in particular, it will execute the contents of the file whose name is in the environment variable BASH_ENV, if there is one. So you might prefer to do this a bit more cautiously:
sudo env -i bash -c "sudo echo '131.253.13.32 www.google.com' >> /etc/hosts"

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