this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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Run command as not-root

Hi everyone

At work, I have to run a command in an AWS instance. In that particular instance only exists the root user. The command should not be executed with root privileges (it executes mpirun, which is not recommended to run as sudo or the machine might break), so I was wondering if there is a way to block or disable the sudo privileges while the command is running. As mentioned, the only user existing there is root, so I suppose "sudo -u" is not an option.

Does anyone know how to do it? Thanks in advance!

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

The system is broken. Wipe it and start again. I could imagine a system with no configured root but root only is just a security nightmare and not worth using as a starting point.

I really hope that machine isn't exposed to the internet..

In theory a root application can drop capabilities when it starts up and remain root pid, but it's not that common.. it's used for certain system apps that require root to increase security. It is not a replacement for unprivileged users.