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Иван Бишевац
Asked: 2013-07-12 23:54:36 +0800 CST

How to supply password to sudo su in script

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Example script:

sudo su admin
ls /usr/bin
exit

When I run it with:

biske@comp1:~$ ./script

Then prompt is changed to:

admin@comp1:/home/biske$

When I type exit it actually prints those lines:

exit bin  games  include  lib  lib32  local sbin  share  src

I wanted output without requiring user to enter anything.

I suppose problem could be solved by feeding this sudo su commmand with password.

Is there a way to do it?

scripts

1 Answers

  1. sudo su user will fork into a new shell. That's the last thing you want to do when in a non-interactive script. Sorry, I mean that's the last thing you want to do in a script after hard-coding a password into it! Please avoid that.

    You would be much better off skipping su and using sudo on its own:

    sudo -u admin -- ls /usr/bin

    Or failing that, just making sure your script is run as root with this block:

    if [ "$(id -u)" != "0" ]; then
   echo "This script must be run as root" 1>&2
   exit 1
fi

    And then there's no need for interacting inside the script at all. Your script can sudo -u... command anything without needing to change password.

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