Often we need to run a command as different users. Some of these users may not even have a login shell (e.g. www-data on Ubuntu Linux). Here are some scenarios of running a command as different user. We’ll use Ubuntu Linux for the purpose of this utorial.
sudo as user using non-login shell
$ whoami user1 $ pwd /home/user1/tmp $ sudo -u www-data pwd /home/gopj/tmp
sudo as user using its login shell
This will run the shell specified by the target user’s password database entry as a login shell.
$ sudo -i -u user2 pwd /home/user2
If you do it for a user with no login shell, then you will get an error msg:
$ sudo -i -u www-data pwd This account is currently not available.
su as user
We can also use su as root user.
$ sudo su - $ whoami root $ su user2 -c pwd /root
Note that when using non-login shell, user’s environment is set as per ~/.bashrc
su as user with login shell
We can also use su as root user.
$ sudo su - $ whoami root $ su - user2 -c pwd /home/user2
Note that when using login shell, user’s environment is set as per ~/.bash_profile
