How to allow Engineers create their Own Heap Dumps?

[100mbs]

I want the Engineers to be able to kick off a heap dump of a java application.

But right now the only person that can do it is the admin with the kill -3 PID#.

Is there a way that i can allow them to kick it off on their own?

 

[elgrandeperro]

with sudo, you can allow users to run commands as other users.

 

[100mbs]

i tried doing this in sudo but i only want them to run kill -3 and not all functions of kill like kill -9. Is this possible.

 

[Annihilannic]

Best to write a root-owned script containing the commands you want to allow them to execute and give them access to that. Restricting the options in a sudo rule can be awkward...

Annihilannic.

 

[100mbs]

you by chance have an example do you for a root-owned script to run kill -3 command?

 

[Annihilannic]

Not tested much, but this one checks for process existence and numeric parameters.

#!/usr/bin/ksh

if [[ $# -lt 1 ]]
then
        print "usage: $0 <pids> ..."
        exit 1
fi

while [[ -n "$1" ]]
do
        if print $1 | egrep -qx '[0-9]+' && ps -p $1 > /dev/null
        then
                print kill -3 $1
        else
                print "invalid or non-existent process: $1"
                exit 2
        fi
        shift
done

Annihilannic.

 

[Annihilannic]

Oh, and of course... remove the print before the kill once you're happy with it!

Annihilannic.

 

[elgrandeperro]

I agree. I would restrict them to sending only 3 to the processes in question, probably by grepping out the name or making sure the parent is correct.

BTW I believe there is an easier way to determine a process existence by sending a null kill (i forgot the signo) and
checking the return staus.