How to ssh as root to a workstation and then run commands as another user.
 

Senario is we have a system where root has authorised keys set up so that it can do a passwordless ssh to $WORKSTATION. I then need to run a script on $WORKSTATION as user "bob" and NOT as user "root". I do not want to set up user "bob" to be allowed passwordless ssh so any ideas how I can do this?

I have tried variations of (as user "root"):

ssh $WORKSTATION "su - bob; ./my_script"

Just hangs unfortunately.

Thanks

ssh $WORKSTATION 'su - bob -c "$PWD/my_script"'

ssh $WORKSTATION 'su - bob -c "$PWD/my_script"' appears to run the command on the local machine as it says it cannot find the script which is located on the $WORKSTATION.

Should the command be:

ssh $WORKSTATION 'su - bob -c "$WORKSTATION:/my_script"`

Thanks

No, the command should not be that. Try providing the fully qualified path (rather than a relative path) for your script.

example: /foo/bar/my_script

I think the $PWD is getting read before the ssh cmd is issued.
You'll have to check the bash docs for order of interpolation.
Using $WORKSTATION won't change that.
If the script is in a constant place, just use the absolute value of the path, or set it as a variable (maybe an input var) in the call to the script that runs ssh.

Where command is the full path to the command.