Execute a command as another user

mpgram · 06-08-2004, 11:21 PM

I am logged in as root. I want to execute a command as another user ($USER).

I am trying to do this from a command line with no scripting and all on one line.

This is for qmail for the ./Maildir/ functionality.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance

paulsm4 · 06-08-2004, 11:30 PM

I think you should be able to do something like "su -c MYCMD".

You can look up the details in "man su".

mpgram · 06-08-2004, 11:33 PM

Yeah, thats what I have been trying, but either I am an idiot (very possible here) or what I am trying to do is not possible.

Here is what I am trying...

su - user -c /var/qmail/bin/maildirmake ~/Maildir

The problem is that the command is not accepting anything after the space.

paulsm4 · 06-08-2004, 11:37 PM

Try putting the command in quotes:

su - MYUSER -c "/var/qmail/bin/maildirmake ~/Maildir"

PS:
Apologies in advance, but I'm booted to Micro$oft at the moment, so I can't test it out myself...

mpgram · 06-08-2004, 11:38 PM

Tried that too...didn't work.

paulsm4 · 06-08-2004, 11:43 PM

Sorry. Even though you said you didn't want to (or couldn't) go that route, it would be work it to wrap the "maildirmake" command and the "~/Maildir" argument together in a shell script to see if that solves the problem:

su - MYUSER -c MYSCRIPT_WITH_CMD_AND_ARGS

mpgram · 06-08-2004, 11:45 PM

The reason I don't want to is becasue I do not know shell scripting yet.

Guess I have to learn that to progress.

Thanks for your help.