Bash: sourcing file as user from script

Question

I am creating a script meant to be run as superuser that reads a file and runs a number of scripts on behalf of all users. The important bit is this:

sudo -u $user -H source /home/$user/list_of_commands

However, whether I encose the command with quotesor not, this fails with:

sudo: source /home/user/list_of_commands: command not found

I have even tried with the . bash builtin:

sudo: . /home/user/list_of_commands: command not found

Of course running source outside a sudo environment works. I thought there might be a PATH problem, and I tried to bypass it by providing the full path to source. However, I cannot find the executable: which source returns which: no source in (/usr/local/sbin:usr/local/bin:usr/bin). So I'm stuck.

How do I make a script source a file as a user?

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-14 06:15:53Z

2

source is a builtin not a command, use it with bash -c:

sudo -u $user -H bash -c "source /home/$user/list_of_commands"

answered Feb 14, 2015 at 6:15

anubhava

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