Centralized sudo sudoers file?

Posted by Stefan Thyberg on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Stefan Thyberg
Published on 2009-12-03T13:43:53Z Indexed on 2012/12/06 5:08 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 469

Filed under:

linux

|

sudo

|

sudoers

I am the admin of several different servers and currently there is a different sudoers file on each one. This is getting slightly out of hand as quite often I need to give someone permissions to do something with sudo but it only gets done on one server. Is there an easy way of editing the sudoers file just on my central server and then distributing it by SFTP or something like that to the other servers in an easy way?

Mostly wondering how other sysadmins solve this problem, since the sudoers file doesn't seem to be remotely accessible with NIS, for example.

Operating system is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 64-bit, but it shouldn't matter.

EDIT: Every machine will, for now, have the same sudoers file.

EDIT2: The accepted answer's comment was the closest to what I actually went ahead and did. I am right now using an SVN-supported puppet-installation and after a few headaches, it's working very well.

© Server Fault or respective owner

Related posts about linux

apt-get install and update fail

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I've got a problem with apt-get update and apt-get install ... commands . every time update or installing fails and errors are : Get:1 http://dl.google.com stable Release.gpg [198B] Ign http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable/main Translation-en_US Get:2 http://dl… >>> More
kernel module compiling error

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
sh@ubuntu:/home/ccpp/helloworld$ make gcc-4.6 -O2 -DMODULE -D_KERNEL_ -W -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -isystem /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/include -c -o hello-1.o hello-1.c hello-1.c:4:0: warning: "MODULE" redefined [enabled by default] <command-line>:0:0: note: this is… >>> More
Build-Essentials installation failing

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I am having trouble accessing the several critical header files that show to be a part of the build process. The "Ubuntu Software Center" shows "Build Essentials" as installed: Next I did the following two commands, which did not improve the problem: ~$ sudo apt-get install build-essential [sudo]… >>> More
Updating Debian kernel

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I'm trying to update my Debian machine to 2.6.32-46 (which is the new stable). However, after doing apt-get update my apt-cache search linux-image shows me: linux-headers-2.6.32-5-486 - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-486 linux-headers-2.6.32-5-686-bigmem - Header files for Linux 2.6.32-5-686-bigmem linux-headers-2… >>> More
Serial connection over a single USB cable (Windows to linux, or linux to linux)

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I'm helping out with a project for an embedded device that only has USB and no serial. This device is running Linux. These days, when we need to connect to a serial port on a device we typically use a USB to serial adapter (on something like a phone system or a load balancing device, etc). I would… >>> More

Related posts about sudo

Error after sudo-ing "sudo: must be setuid root"

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
On a colleagues computer, everytime I use a sudo command, I get this error: sudo: must be setuid root I tried various things mentioned on the internet, like changing the permissions to 4755 from a live cd, but even this command from a live-cd sudo chmod 4755 /media/device/usr/bin/sudo gives the… >>> More
any clue in these logs why keyboard audio and internet are messed up

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
Jun 7 00:01:18 Isis lightdm: pam_unix(lightdm-autologin:session): session opened for user mimi by (uid=0) Jun 7 00:01:18 Isis lightdm: pam_ck_connector(lightdm-autologin:session): nox11 mode, ignoring PAM_TTY :0 Jun 7 00:01:26 Isis polkitd(authority=local): Registered Authentication Agent for… >>> More
Sudo yum seems to fail on CentOS, but works fine after sudo -i

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am currently having some trouble with yum through sudo. For some reason, it does not seem to work: aron@graviton [/var/log]# sudo yum clean all There was a problem importing one of the Python modules required to run yum. The error leading to this problem was: /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/datetime… >>> More
sudo in Debian squeeze inside linux-vserver always wants password

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Every since I upgraded all my linux-vserver Debian guests from Lenny to Squeeze I've the apparent problem that whenever I want to use sudo it asks me for my password. Every time. I've configured sudo to have a timeout of 30 minutes: Defaults timestamp_timeout=30 . This has been configured when it… >>> More
Ubuntu - Security - Sudo disable password :: What difference in security if sudo will not requere pa

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hi, What difference in security of UBUNTU if sudo will not require password? Thanks >>> More