Objective: Switch and execute commands as a particular user with a nologin shell on Linux.
A nologin user entry might look something like this in the /etc/passwd file.
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$ cat /etc/passwd | grep www-data www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/usr/sbin/nologin |
The above example is for the www-data user. Notice the /usr/sbin/nologin shell assigned to this user.
If you try to su to this user from root, you will most probably get the following error message.
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# su - www-data This account is currently not available. |
To switch to the nologin user account using su as root, you can use the following syntax.
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# su -s /bin/bash www-data $ whoami www-data |
To switch from a non-root user, append sudo to the above command.
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$ whoami ibrahim $ sudo su -s /bin/bash www-data $ whoami www-data |
To run a script as a nologin user, use the following command syntax.
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# su -s /bin/bash -c /path/to/script www-data |
If you are want to use sudo and want to open a bash shell for that nologin user, use the following command syntax.
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$ sudo -u www-data /bin/bash |
To run a script using sudo, use the following command syntax.
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$ sudo -u www-data /path/to/script |
Mohamed Ibrahim
ibrahim = { interested_in(unix, linux, android, open_source, reverse_engineering); coding(c, shell, php, python, java, javascript, nodejs, react); plays_on(xbox, ps4); linux_desktop_user(true); }
