su options - running command as another user
Yes. Here's the --help
:
$ su --help
Usage: su [options] [LOGIN]
Options:
-c, --command COMMAND pass COMMAND to the invoked shell
-h, --help display this help message and exit
-, -l, --login make the shell a login shell
-m, -p,
--preserve-environment do not reset environment variables, and
keep the same shell
-s, --shell SHELL use SHELL instead of the default in passwd
And some testing (I used sudo
as I don't know the password for the nobody
account)
$ sudo su -c whoami nobody
[sudo] password for oli:
nobody
When your command takes arguments you need to quote it. If you don't, strange things will occur. Here I am —as root— trying to create a directory in /home/oli (as oli) without quoting the full command:
# su -c mkdir /home/oli/java oli
No passwd entry for user '/home/oli/java'
It's only read mkdir
as the value for the -c
flag and it's trying to use /home/oli/java
as the username. If we quote it, it just works:
# su -c "mkdir /home/oli/java" oli
# stat /home/oli/java
File: ‘/home/oli/java’
Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory
Device: 811h/2065d Inode: 5817025 Links: 2
Access: (0775/drwxrwxr-x) Uid: ( 1000/ oli) Gid: ( 1000/ oli)
Access: 2016-02-16 10:49:15.467375905 +0000
Modify: 2016-02-16 10:49:15.467375905 +0000
Change: 2016-02-16 10:49:15.467375905 +0000
Birth: -
Note: "I have the script's owner set as root" doesn't do anything; even if you have the setuid bit set it still doesn't work
Assuming you're actually running the script as root, however, you can use sudo
. su
is primarily for switching users, while sudo
is for executing commands as other users. The -u
flag lets you specify which user to execute the command as:
sudo -u hudson command