Trying to execute a shell script as another user from another shell script

Question

Ubuntu 18.04

I have one shell script: doit.sh that copies a shell script to another user's home folder, and then tries to run it. I tried multiple combinations, but it's not working.

doit.sh:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
sudo mv testsh.sh /home/test3
sudo chown test3:test3 /home/test3/testsh.sh
sudo -i -u test3 bash << EOF
testsh='testsh.sh'
exec $testsh
EOF

testsh.sh:

#!/bin/bash
echo "export RAILS_ENV='rails_env'" |  tee test3.4 >/dev/null

testsh.sh was moved to /home/test3, but the test3.4 file was not created in /home/test3 and I am not getting any error messages. Any idea if this can be done?

Barmar · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-13 12:16:57Z

2

The problem is that $testsh is being expanded by the original shell, not the shell run by sudo. You need quote the EOF token to prevent variable expansion in the here-doc.

sudo -i -u test3 bash << 'EOF'
testsh='testsh.sh'
exec $testsh
EOF

But I'm not sure why you need that variable, you can just do:

sudo -i -u test3 /home/test3/testsh.sh

answered Sep 13, 2019 at 12:16

Barmar

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12 Comments

EastsideDev Over a year ago

I did not realize I can simply execute that shell script as the other user. Your solution is missing the bash command to execute the shell. Without it, I get an error message. This solves the problem I'm having

Barmar Over a year ago

There's no need for the bash command, that's done automatically by #!/bin/bash in the script.

Barmar Over a year ago

Make sure you chmod 755 testsh.sh

EastsideDev Over a year ago

I kept getting an error message: testsh.sh: command not found. When I added bash, it worked. This is on Ubuntu 18.04. I checked and the x flag was set for all

Barmar Over a year ago

Make sure testsh.sh has Unix newlines, not Windows newlines.

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