I'm loving Knoppix a lot, but being new to Debian there are two things I can't figure out how to do. I asked on a #debian but the answer seemed rather complex and I couldn't find anything on google.

I want to allow a regular user account (mine in this case) to be able to shutdown and do ifup and ifdown commands to bring up interfaces. How would I go about doing this the Debian way? I know I can use sudo or just su to root, but it's bothersome to type my password all the time for that (I'm using a notebook). I tried to change the owner / group of /etc/network/interfaces, but then pump complained. Any ideas?