If you have executables (programs, scripts), that need root privileges to run (e.g. that mount something), you don't need to type in the su password everytime.
You can set the suid for that file and change its owner to root:
chmod u+s filename chown root filename
I have many computers I need to connect to from my Linux box. Network browsing works, but is terribly slow, so I want to create some shortcuts, that I can mount with a single mouseclick what I need from a list. First I thought to modify the fstab and put there entries that would allow me to easily mount smb shares as a normal user. E.g.:
//paula/michael /media/smbmounts smbfs noauto,user,credentials=/home/jeltsch/.smbpasswd1 0 0
First I added a symbolic link to /etc/init.d/rc5.d/:
cd /etc/init.d/rc5.d sudo ln -s ../autofs S21autofs
Then I added to the /etc/auto.master the following line:
/media/automounts /etc/auto.smbmounts
Then I created the file auto.smbmounts with the following content:
michael_msbl.helsinki.fi -fstype=smbfs,username=michael,password=## ://paula/michael
Then I created the mountpoint:
sudo mkdir /media/automounts/michael_msbl.helsinki.fi
Then I activated the autofs daemon: