Running IBM Spectrum Scale commands without remote root login

Every administration node in the IBM Spectrum Scale™ cluster must be able to run administration commands on any other node in the cluster. Each administration node must be able to do so without the use of a password and without producing any extraneous messages. Also, most of the IBM Spectrum Scale administration commands must run at the root level. One solution to meet these requirements is to configure each node to permit general remote login to its root user ID. However, there are secure solutions available that do not require root-level login.

You can use a sudo program, or a sudo-like framework to enable a user login, which is not at the root-level. With sudo wrapper, you can launch IBM Spectrum Scale administration commands with a sudo wrapper script. This script uses ssh to log in to the remote node using a non-root ID, and then uses sudo on the remote node to run the commands with root-level privileges. The root user on an administration node still needs to be able to log in to all nodes in the cluster as the non-root ID, without being prompted for a password.

To use sudo wrappers, complete the tasks in the following topics: