Solved - sudo into user instead of root with rundeck

Question

i'm configuring a server for some bioinfo analysis on Centos7 and i installed rundeck. Rundeck seems to launch scripts as its own account name and i decided to use the sudo bypass to make it access my scripts.

using visudo i can make sudo with rundeck change to root having some commands without password. As soon as i put the user bioinfo instead of root, the system asks for a password for the same commands.

here is the part of the sudoers file :

root    ALL=(ALL)       ALL
bioinfo ALL=(ALL)       ALL
rundeck ALL=(bioinfo)      NOPASSWD:/home/bioinfo/singularity_data/Bionano3.5,/usr/local/bin/singularity,/bin/*

i dont know what's different between root and bioinfo as they have the same rights. Would anyone have an idea on what would make it not working with bioinfo when it works fine with root ?

I tried my configuration running as root

su - rundeck

and then doing a

sudo whoami

if root => root
if bioinfo => ask for password

Thank you

Answer 1

For the user bioinfo to be able to run sudo commands without typing in a password you need to modify the bioinfo entry in sudoers to include NOPASSWD:

bioinfo ALL=(ALL)   NOPASSWD: ALL

Please note that doing this allows the user to run any sudo command without having to type the password in.

If the user is a member of a group (%wheel or %users for example) that is also specified in sudoers, the last entry takes precedence - so put this entry underneath.

If you are want one user to be able to run things as another user without needing a password:

rundeck ALL=(bioinfo)      NOPASSWD:/home/bioinfo/singularity_data/Bionano3.5,/usr/local/bin/singularity,/bin/*

then you need to invoke commands in the format sudo -u bioinfo <cmd> otherwise it thinks you're still trying to invoke as root