Simplicity is a form of art...

Not needing run_init for password-less service management
by Sven Vermeulen, post on Tue 09 April 2013

One of the things that has been bugging me was why, even with having pam_rootok.so set in /etc/pam.d/run_init, I cannot enjoy passwordless service management without using run_init directly:

# rc-service postgresql-9.2 status
Authenticating root.
Password:

# run_init rc-service postgresql-9.2 status
Authenticating root …