Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello Everyone,

I'm new to unix and having trouble with switching users
s_user='sample_user', I need to connect to a remote server using the user "sampleuser" copy files on that remote server. However I am not allowed to add a private key to that same server nor add scripts on sampleuser's directory so this is the most plausible solution I could come up with.

########start#########
s_user='sampleuser'

su - $s_user

########end###########

it does prompts me for the password of that user but it terminates and has this "error"

./sample.sh[10]: 741 Killed

Please help me

And also it would be nice if you could with ideas in making a login 'prompt' for users. Thanks Very Much

You could use ftp to transfer the files, setup the user and password in your $HOME/.netrc file:

Code:

machine remote_server
login sample_user
password Secret

Then just use something link the below to fetch the files:

Code:

ftp remote_server <<EOF
   cd /path/to/file
   get filename
   quit
EOF

Make sure the .netrc file has 600 permissions or ftp will refuse to use it (also you don't want other users being able to see the password).

Hmm I'm a bit confused with your example above. Will the "password" there be the one that switches me to sampleuser or the one that connects me to the server. Before, the usual step for me is to switch to sampleuser first then connect to the remote server. This is because sampleuser has a ssh key on that remote server while my username has none. Sorry if I'm such a noob :P cheers!

OK now I think I understand what you are trying to do.

Is it acceptable to copy sampleuser's id_rsa (private key) and id_rsa.pub to your own .ssh directory?

If so you can then use the ssh/sftp -i identity_file command line option to swap in these certificates for transfers to the remote_host eg:

Code:

sftp -i $HOME/.ssh/sample_user_id_rsa remote_user@remote_host

T---T sadly no. I ain't allowed to do that. Actually I've also thought of that before since it might save me the hassle of coding and the torment that usually comes with it.

I don't know what's wrong with my script, I believe it's possible to switch into a certain user and use it within a shell script since I've seen some on the internet. (although just parts of it)

It's been a long time since I've programmed something or even wrote a script. And I'm a newbie with unix. Do you know any online links that may prove useful to me? I really appreciate your help! THANKS!

As far as I see it your have 4 options: