[SOLVED] Execute smartctl as user without password

[ticojohn]

I would like to run smartctl to check the temperatures on three drives in my desktop without having to use sudo, or logging in as root.
There are several reasons I want to this, but primarily I want execute smartctl from a script. And hhdtemp and the disks utility don't give the same results as does smartctl. Besides which hddtemp also requires root authorization which I am trying to circumvent.

I have looked at a number of different references including the sudoers man page. It seems pretty straightforward but I can't get it to work. I started by creating a file in /etc/sudoers.d

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#nano /etc/sudoers.d/username

Then I edited that file with the following, and then saved the file

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username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/smartctl

Finally I changed the mode of that file to 0440 as required

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chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.d/username

I then rebooted the machine to ensure that the sudo changes got loaded. But when I try to execute as user I get the following

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usrname@debian:~$ /usr/sbin/smartctl --all /dev/sda
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.10.0-8-amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Smartctl open device: /dev/sda failed: Permission denied

Can somebody tell me what I am doing wrong?

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I am running Bullseye amd64.

[CwF]

Use polkit.

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pkaction -l

this list the available actions to tweak

Combine those actions with the user info in a pkla file, placed by root in etc/polkit/localautority/.

The details are in post on these boards!

[ticojohn]

I thought that I might have found the problem and changed the line in the /etc/sudoers.d/username file to the following

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username ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/smartctl

No joy!

[ticojohn]

Use polkit.

Code: Select all

pkaction -l

this list the available actions to tweak

Combine those actions with the user info in a pkla file, placed by root in etc/polkit/localautority/.

The details are in post on these boards!

Okay. I appreciate your suggestion, and I'll take a look. But I'd like to know why what I am trying to do doesn't work. It is also well documented and SHOULD work, shouldn't it? I mean, I think it is even in the sudoers man page.

[CwF]

Can somebody tell me what I am doing wrong?

You need to include 'sudo'.

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usrname@debian:~$ sudo smartctl --all /dev/sda

[ticojohn]

Can somebody tell me what I am doing wrong?

You need to include 'sudo'.

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usrname@debian:~$ sudo smartctl --all /dev/sda

Uh Huh. Tried that. Still asks for a password and then it tells me i don't have permission. I am trying to avoid that and thought that by adding the file to /etc/sudoers.d I could avoid all that. I'll see if I can figure out how to do it with polkit, but what I've read looks somewhat intimidating. Maybe it''s just my 72 year old brain.

[CwF]

username ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/smartctl

instead

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username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

[ticojohn]

username ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/smartctl

instead

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username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

OOPS! Found the problem. I did not have my user in the sudoers list. DUMB! After supper I will try again. Thanks for the help @CwF

[ticojohn]

Thanks @CwF. It now works as expected. It helps to pay attention to details.