Linux Blogging

Reset user's password without root: 

We all know to reset the users password in linux using the following command. 

Sol: sudo passwd username 

But is there any way to allow non-root users to change other user's password. Specifically, is there a way to grant help desk employees the ability to do password resets. The help desk already can reset Windows passwords, which is easy to delegate out. 

Sol: Add a group called helpdesk and add all heldesk users to it. Then add the following to sudoers file.

%helpdesk ALL=/usr/bin/passwd

Now they can sudo to change passwords but nothing else.