I'm looking to write a .sh script that will allow me, from my home, directory to list and remove *.lst and *.bad *.dat files owned by user 1 (easy enough!). I then need to su to user 2 so that I have permissions to remove the *.lst *.log and *.bad files from user 2 home directory. I have superuser privilages if it can be done through root.

Any ideas/script examples would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Soots

Since you have superuser privileges you do not need to do any sort of 'su'. Root automatically has the rights to remove files from any and all directories (regardless of the ownerships).

Well, generally speaking, if you want to run as a command as another user, you don't use su, but sudo. Read it's man page--pretty easy to use. But you will be prompted for the user's password (though only one time, so that you can do a bunch of sudo commands before having the time period run out and you have to retype the password.) Prompting for the password means that you can't run your script as cronjobs. Else you have to store the password in some file, which is nt safe.

That really depends on the scope of work and permissions required to carry it out as well as the level of access available to the user. If the user has root access then the su can be carried out without a password (for safety to not delete incorrect files as shown in the post which follows this one) or the work required here can be directly carried out as root.

If you have root:
su - user1 -c "rm *.lst *.bad *.dat"
su - user2 -c "rm *.lst *.bad *.dat"

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I have tried above script
actually i want to remove some files which in owned by root dir.

so i have written my script like this

su -xxxx -c "rm *.dat"
where xxx is root password.

but the error user xxx does n't exist was coming.


please help


regards
rajan

"su -xxxx -c "rm *.dat"
where xxx is root password.

but the error user xxx does n't exist was coming."

The above is incorrect syntax, here is the correct:

su - useryouwantobe -c "rm *.dat"

Notice the space between "su - " and username. If you are running this as root then u won't be prompted for a password, but if not then you will be prompted for the password of the user u are switching to. imo, use sudo.