Can't su to user jenkins after installing Jenkins

linux unix jenkins
sfendell picture sfendell · Aug 5, 2013 · Viewed 93.1k times · Source

I've installed jenkins and I'm trying to get into a shell as Jenkins to add an ssh key. I can't seem to su into the jenkins user:

[root@pacmandev /]# sudo su jenkins
[root@pacmandev /]# whoami
root
[root@pacmandev /]# echo $USER
root
[root@pacmandev /]#

The jenkins user exists in my /etc/passwd file. Runnin su jenkins asks for a password, but rejects my normal password. sudo su jenkins doesn't seem to do anything; same for sudo su - jenkins. I'm on CentOS.

Answer

thekbb picture thekbb · Aug 6, 2013

jenkins is a service account, it doesn't have a shell by design. It is generally accepted that service accounts shouldn't be able to log in interactively.

I didn't answer this one initially as it's a duplicate of a question that has been moved to server fault. I should have answered rather than linked to the answer in a comment.

if for some reason you want to login as jenkins, you can do so with: sudo su -s /bin/bash jenkins

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