sudo

Sudo (superuser do) allows a system administrator to give certain users (or groups of users) the ability to run some (or all) commands as root while logging all commands and arguments. Sudo operates on a per-command basis. It is not a replacement for the shell. Features include: the ability to restrict what commands a user may run on a per-host basis, copious logging of each command (providing a clear audit trail of who did what), a configurable timeout of the sudo command, and the ability to use the same configuration file (sudoers) on many different machines.