Hi All,

I was asked a question today that I can't seem to answer at the moment. My colleague wants to know how he can run a script as UserB from UserA. For example, if he was doing this process manually he would:
1. su - UserB
2. Enter password
3. Run commands as UserB
4. Exit back to UserA shell
However, su as far as I know doesn't accept passwords other than from a local tty. sudo also won't accept a piped in password and rexecd may not be running or available.

So my question to you guys is, how can I help him automate this process?

I'm scratchin' my head.
J.

Take a look at sudo. It will let you run applications as other users.

set up sudo correctly using "NOPASSWD" for whatever command it is and then 'sudo -u userb command'
Set the script owned by userb and chmod it 4750 (adding user A to whatever group owns the script)
If it's an automated thing, put the script in userb's crontab
etc
etc
etc

Hi David, thanks for the response. I did check out sudo but I was having problems with entering a password. I appreciate the fast response.

sigsegv has enlightened me... I didn't know there was a NOPASSWD option. I'll pass your suggestions to my colleague and he'll be very happy.

Thanks guys.
J.