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Tommaso
Asked: 2012-01-19 05:56:48 +0800 CST

How to run command as user who has /usr/sbin/nologin as Shell?

  • 772

All I need to do is to run a specific script as a particular user who does have the nologin/false shell indicated in /etc/passwd.

I would run the script as root and this should run as another user. Running:

~# su -c "/bin/touch /tmp/test" testuser

would work, but I need a valid shell for the testuser. I know I can disable the password with passwd -d testuser and leave the shell to /bin/bash this way would secure a little bit but I need to have nologin/false shell.

Basically what I need is what crontab does when we set jobs to be running as a particular user, regardless this one has nologin/false shell.

p.s I found this thread Executing a command as a nologin user, but I have no idea how to concatenate the command su -s /bin/sh $user to the script I need to run.

linux bash login shell su

8 Answers

  1. You can use the -s switch to su to run a particular shell

    su -s /bin/bash -c '/path/to/your/script' testuser

    (Prepend sudo to the above if testuser is a passwordless user.)

    • 148

  2. You can do this with sudo -u if you have it installed:

    # whoami
root
# sudo -u apache whoami
apache
# getent passwd apache
apache:x:48:48:Apache:/var/www:/sbin/nologin
    • 15

  3. By providing the script as the argument to execute to /bin/sh:

    su -s "/bin/sh /your/script/location" username
    • 7

  4. just realized :

    su -s "/bin/bash" -c "/bin/touch /tmp/testuser" testuser

    maybe there is a better way ?!

    • 2

  5. actually, the best way to do this is via runuser

    see the man page for details

    this tool is used to deal with the situation as the developer said in his bolg

    Whenever an service is running as root and wants to change UID using the shell it should use runuser.

    http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/55588.html

    i've post this answer in many palaces, forgive me if you find this annoying

    • 2

  6. All you need is sudo:

    sudo -u <user> -g <group> -- <command>

    • 0

  7. Use sudo -u to specify the user. Also use the -i flag to set environment variables of the target user too.

    sudo -i -u user command
    • -1

  8. Use su command with shell -s and -c command. As shown below

     su  exec -l -c '/bin/bash /etc/update_conf.sh' -s /bin/bash
    • -2