How to enable non sudo user access to top with all processes?

Question

I use Ubuntu Server 10.04. I have users that normally don't have access to sudo. When this user is using top command he sees only processes for the current user. I added a line to /etc/sudoers:

user ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/top

But now we have access not only for a list of system processes, but also for killing them, which is not desired.

Is there any other way of doing this?

Answer 1

You can allow the user to run only "top -s" this is secure mode and disables the ability to kill stuff.

user ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/top -s

Answer 2

Normally top will display all processes on the system. That your top is not doing so suggests that something has been done to restrict it - there are kernel patches that add this functionality. You need to find out what has been added to your system.

Answer 3

bofh ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/top

works fine for me, i can sudo top only; maybe you have other sudo rules that helps you killing procs as well?

if you're talking about the right to kill a process with top well that's normal; top uses kill() internally to terminate the process requested; once you execute top as root you'll also make the syscalls involved as root user