how to shutdown a linux machine, including the root password, in 1 line?

Question

How do you include the root password, say for shutting down an ubuntu machine?

like,

sudo shutdown now

is it possible to include the password on this 1 line? like an extra parameter?

reason for this is I am trying to play with this app named azr remote prompt which lets you send commands from your blackberry to your ubuntu machine and it seems like a 1 way trip. you send commands, but you don't get any response from the computer.

Solution

Yes, sudo has a '-S' a switch that allows it to read in the sudo password from stdin. All you have to do is echo your root password - so for your instance it would look like this (replace [PASSWORD] with your root password)

history -d $((HISTCMD-1)) && echo '[PASSWORD]' | sudo -S shutdown now

Comments

[ctrl-alt-delor]

You can also edit /etc/sudoers to allow some commands to not need a password.

[Adit Saxena]

@richard if he was able to edit the /etc/sudoers he wouldn't ask this question! Here's a way: sleekmason.wordpress.com/fluxbox/…

[ctrl-alt-delor]

@AditSaxena, to answer your comment: because I just added a comment, it could lead to an answer, but is not an answer.

[André Paramés]

@simon: This will make the password appear in the shell history file, which is not recommended! I suggest you put history -d $((HISTCMD-1)) && before that code, to ensure that line doesn't appear in the history file. So, the final command should be history -d $((HISTCMD-1)) && echo '[PASSWORD]' | sudo -S shutdown now.

[Lekensteyn]

If you're using Bash, you can also prevent writing history by setting an empty HISTFILE as in HISTFILE=; command here....

[chip]

@AndréParamés yeah man thanks for the additional information, but I think I won't be using it for now because after running the command on my phone the executed commands get erased right away but anyway thanks again, will be keeping that in mind in case it might be necessary in the future