How do I use su to execute the rest of the bash script as that user?
I've written a script that takes, as an argument, a string that is a concatenation of a username and a project. The script is supposed to switch (su) to the username, cd to a specific directory based upon the project string.
I basically want to do:
su $USERNAME;
cd /home/$USERNAME/$PROJECT;
svn update;
The problem is that once I do an su... it just waits there. Which makes sense since the flow of execution has passed to switching to the user. Once I exit, then the rest of the things execute but it doesn't work as desired.
I prepended su to the svn command but the command failed (i.e. it didn't update svn in the directory desired).
How do I write a script that allows the user to switch user and invoke svn (among other things)?
Answer
Much simpler: use sudo to run a shell and use a heredoc to feed it commands.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
whoami
sudo -i -u someuser bash << EOF
echo "In"
whoami
EOF
echo "Out"
whoami
(answer originally on SuperUser)