Hi, TLDR: is it possible to run a command as another user using su, if that user is a system user?
I'm trying to solve bug#739637 by running the command as user gnuhealth, using the command `su` instead of `sudo`. Let's take a simple example to start, running the command whoami as another user, from a root shell. First, become root by your prefered way (I use sudo ;) ) emilien@debiansid:~$ sudo su - [sudo] password for emilien: root@debiansid:~# Running the command using sudo, I see the username being returned as expected: root@debiansid:~# sudo -u gnuhealth whoami gnuhealth Now trying to reproduce that using su. According to the manpage: su [options] [username] -c, --command COMMAND So I would expect to first have the command name su, then -c and the command to execute, and then the username. root@debiansid:~# su -c whoami gnuhealth root@debiansid:~# That doesn't return the expected output. Trying different kinds of possibilities (quoting the command, using = and putting the username before the command) doesn't give better results: root@debiansid:~# su -c "whoami" gnuhealth root@debiansid:~# su -c=whoami gnuhealth root@debiansid:~# su -c="whoami" gnuhealth root@debiansid:~# su --command whoami gnuhealth root@debiansid:~# su --command "whoami" gnuhealth root@debiansid:~# su --command=whoami gnuhealth root@debiansid:~# su --command="whoami" gnuhealth root@debiansid:~# su gnuhealth -c whoami root@debiansid:~# su gnuhealth -c "whoami" root@debiansid:~# su gnuhealth -c=whoami root@debiansid:~# su gnuhealth -c="whoami" root@debiansid:~# su gnuhealth --command whoami root@debiansid:~# su gnuhealth --command "whoami" root@debiansid:~# su gnuhealth --command=whoami root@debiansid:~# su gnuhealth --command="whoami" root@debiansid:~# The weird part is that running these commands [*] in a terminal on my Ubuntu host machine *do* return the expected username back. What could be the reason I don't get the command su to run on my Debian sid machine? Are you able to run that? Aaaaaah, wait, now that I'm typing this, I have an enlightenment: the user is created as a system user (I believed according to the instructions on the GNU Health wiki, but I can't find that back now). Could that be the reason why I can't get su to run the command as that user? User creation is done in gnuhealth-server.postinst by this command: adduser --home /var/lib/gnuhealth --quiet --system --group gnuhealth Questions: - Is it possible to run a command as another user using su, if that user is a system user? - Should the created user not be a system user? Cheers, +Emilien [*] except the variants using = with -c -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/canqxmqhiqmfnmbyzypi10j7g_oezvnymmarlfa993s9otaw...@mail.gmail.com
