Switching user inside a shell script doesn't seem to work


 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Switching user inside a shell script doesn't seem to work
# 8  
Old 03-24-2014
In this first code sample that u gave, all the $ symbol were given without escaping them. So what the shell was doing was expanding the variables first and then pass it to the su command. This variables being undefined in the shell in which you invoked them were expanded as blank and then passed to the su. So when you try to print them into a file using echo the actual variables that were getting printed was the one in the main shell and the not the one that was intended,i.e, the One which are in su.
That being said what I did was escape all the characters that might be expanded in the main shell and then pass it to su so that unwantef shell substitution/expansion do not take place.

That also being said the best approach to your issue would be to create another script which does all the things that the other user does and then call that script while you do su. That way you can avoid all these confusion.
Login or Register to Ask a Question

Previous Thread | Next Thread

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. HP-UX

Su to another user from root doesn't work within shell script

Hello I have a shell script that is run as root. Script rins ok until the point where it have to switch to user "mqm" to run other commands. It just hangs at the point of this line in the script su - mqm -c "dspmq" I ran the same commands at the terminal and they run fine. Any thoughts. (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: mo12
6 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

How to login as a different user inside a shell script?

hi, i want to login as a different user inside a shell script and then call another shell script from that script. how to do that? original script : script_A.sh so when the script_A.sh is called , i want to login as a different user and then call another shell script(script_B.sh) from... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: Little
3 Replies

3. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

find command in shell script doesn't work

Hello all, Something strange going on with a shell script I'm writing. It's trying to write a list of files that it finds in a given directory to another file. But I also have a skip list so matching files that are in that skip list should be, well uhm, skipped :) Here's the code of my... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: StijnV
2 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

Perl variables inside Net::Telnet::Cisco Module doesn't work

I am writing perl script to configure Cisco device but Variables inside Net::Telnet::Cisco Module doesn't work and passed to device without resolving. Please advise. here is a sample of script: use Net::Telnet::Cisco; $device = "10.14.199.1"; ($o1, $o2, $o3, $o4) = split(/\./,$device);... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: ahmed_zaher
5 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

$RANDOM does not work inside a shell script

Hi folks I'm coding on Ubuntu 9.04 standard shell. I'm writing a script that needs to generate a random number at some point of its execution. When I do echo $RANDOMas a command inside shell, I clearly get some randomly generated number However when I do i=`$RANDOM` echo $ior even... (14 Replies)
Discussion started by: ksk
14 Replies

6. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Switching user inside a shell script

Dear All, I want to switch a user inside a shell script.My current user say x and user y to whom i want to switch both have login on the same server,the one on which i want to execute my script on. "I want to do something like this su - y Password should be provided in the script itself.And... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: navjotmannan
6 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

shell script, echo doesn't work

#!/bin/sh something(){ echo "Inside something" echo $1 $2 } val=$(something "Hello " "world") Output expected: Inside somethingHello world But it's not echoing. (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: cola
4 Replies

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

switching to another user in shell script...

Hi, I have a shell script in which I need to switch to another user and execute some commands and then come back to the original user. To make it more clear - I have to log in as user root then 'su' to jag - execute a script called backup.sh and then logout and come back to root again.. ... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: bjagadeesh
1 Replies

9. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Script doesn't work, but commands inside work

Howdie everyone... I have a shell script RemoveFiles.sh Inside this file, it only has two commands as below: rm -f ../../reportToday/temp/* rm -f ../../report/* My problem is that when i execute this script, nothing happened. Files remained unremoved. I don't see any error message as it... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: cheongww
2 Replies

10. Shell Programming and Scripting

grep doesn't work within shell script?

I am trying to run the following code from a script file but it complains that syntax of (both instances of) grep is wrong. When I copy and paste it to the terminal, it is OK. Any idea what the problem might be? set i = `grep -c #define flags.h` while ($i>20) @ i-- my func (`cat... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: barisgultekin
4 Replies
Login or Register to Ask a Question
script(1)							   User Commands							 script(1)

NAME
script - make record of a terminal session SYNOPSIS
script [-a] [filename] DESCRIPTION
The script utility makes a record of everything printed on your screen. The record is written to filename. If no file name is given, the record is saved in the file typescript. See WARNINGS. The script command forks and creates a sub-shell, according to the value of $SHELL, and records the text from this session. The script ends when the forked shell exits or when Control-d is typed. OPTIONS
The following option is supported: -a Appends the session record to filename, rather than overwriting it. NOTES
script places everything that appears on the screen in filename, including prompts. ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWcsu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |CSI |Enabled | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
attributes(5) WARNINGS
script can pose a security risk when used in directories that are writable by other users (for example, /tmp), especially when run by a privileged user, that is, root. Be sure that typescript is not a link before running script. SunOS 5.11 30 Jan 2004 script(1)