How to run a command as a specific user in an init script?

linux bash centos init rhel
ddario picture ddario · Jul 30, 2013 · Viewed 154k times · Source

I'm writing an init script which is supposed to execute a single command as a user different than root. This is how I'm doing it currently:
sudo -u username command

This generally works as expected on Ubuntu/Debian, but on RHEL the script which is executed as the command hangs.
Is there another way to run the command as another user?
(Note that I can't use lsb init functions as they're not available on RHEL/Centos 5.x.)

Answer

lagweezle picture lagweezle · Jul 24, 2015

On RHEL systems, the /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions script is intended to provide similar to what you want. If you source that at the top of your init script, all of it's functions become available.

The specific function provided to help with this is daemon. If you are intending to use it to start a daemon-like program, a simple usage would be:

daemon --user=username command

If that is too heavy-handed for what you need, there is runuser (see man runuser for full info; some versions may need -u prior to the username):

/sbin/runuser username -s /bin/bash -c "command(s) to run as user username"

Related questions

Check if directory mounted with bash

I am using mount -o bind /some/directory/here /foo/bar I want to check /foo/bar though with a bash script, and see if its been mounted? If not, then call the above mount command, else do something else. …

Read More
Saving awk output to variable

Can anyone help me out with this problem? I'm trying to save the awk output into a variable. variable = `ps -ef | grep "port 10 -" | grep -v "grep port 10 -"| awk '{printf "%s", $12}'` printf "$variable" EDIT: $12 corresponds to a …

Read More
error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1 on CentOS

I'm trying to install lxml package on CentOS using sudo pip install lxml and its throwing this error right at the end: error: error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1 --------------------------------------- Command /usr/bin/python -c "import setuptools;__file__='/…

Read More