Start a program for a user as root, with process belonging to user

gnashley · 03-17-2007, 12:58 PM

I'm trying to to start a process while running as root. But I want the program to run on a users desktop and have the process belong to the user and not root.

I've been doing something like this:
sudo $USER
xauth merge /home/$USER/.Xauthority
export DISPLAY=:0.0
/usr/bin/myprogram &

this will start the program alright, but the process belongs to root and not to $USER. How do I get this process to be owned by the $USER?

gamma9mu · 03-17-2007, 02:36 PM

try:

sudo -u $USER [command]

Valkyrie_of_valhalla · 03-17-2007, 03:29 PM

or maybe

su $USER

this should run all the commands that follow as the user stored in the variable

gnashley · 03-19-2007, 05:09 AM

Neither of those will work.
The user is logged in and running X. I am running a shell script as root which I want to start a GUI application on the users desktop, but the process should belong to the user.

ntubski · 03-19-2007, 01:58 PM

You have to put them inside the shell script:

Code:

xauth merge /home/$USER/.Xauthority
export DISPLAY=:0.0
su $USER -c '/usr/bin/myprogram' &