|
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CONFIG FILES | EXIT STATUS | FILES | HISTORY | SEE ALSO | AVAILABILITY | COLOPHON |
RUNUSER(1) User Commands RUNUSER(1)
runuser - run a command with substitute user and group ID
runuser [options] -u user [[--] command [argument...]]
runuser [options] [-] [user [argument...]]
runuser can be used to run commands with a substitute user and group
ID. If the option -u is not given, runuser falls back to su-
compatible semantics and a shell is executed. The difference between
the commands runuser and su is that runuser does not ask for a
password (because it may be executed by the root user only) and it
uses a different PAM configuration. The command runuser does not
have to be installed with set-user-ID permissions.
If the PAM session is not required, then the recommended solution is
to use the setpriv(1) command.
When called without arguments, runuser defaults to running an
interactive shell as root.
For backward compatibility, runuser defaults to not changing the
current directory and to setting only the environment variables HOME
and SHELL (plus USER and LOGNAME if the target user is not root).
This version of runuser uses PAM for session management.
Note that runuser in all cases use PAM (pam_getenvlist()) to do the
final environment modification. Command-line options such as --login
and --preserve-environment affect the environment before it is
modified by PAM.
-c, --command=command
Pass command to the shell with the -c option.
-f, --fast
Pass -f to the shell, which may or may not be useful,
depending on the shell.
-g, --group=group
The primary group to be used. This option is allowed for the
root user only.
-G, --supp-group=group
Specify a supplementary group. This option is available to
the root user only. The first specified supplementary group
is also used as a primary group if the option --group is not
specified.
-, -l, --login
Start the shell as a login shell with an environment similar
to a real login:
* clears all the environment variables except for TERM and
variables specified by --whitelist-environment
* initializes the environment variables HOME, SHELL, USER,
LOGNAME, and PATH
* changes to the target user's home directory
* sets argv[0] of the shell to '-' in order to make the shell
a login shell
-P, --pty
Create a pseudo-terminal for the session. The independent
terminal provides better security as the user does not share a
terminal with the original session. This can be used to avoid
TIOCSTI ioctl terminal injection and other security attacks
against terminal file descriptors. The entire session can
also be moved to the background (e.g., "runuser --pty -u
username -- command &"). If the pseudo-terminal is enabled,
then runuser works as a proxy between the sessions (copy stdin
and stdout).
This feature is mostly designed for interactive sessions. If
the standard input is not a terminal, but for example a pipe
(e.g., echo "date" | runuser --pty -u user), then the ECHO
flag for the pseudo-terminal is disabled to avoid messy
output.
-m, -p, --preserve-environment
Preserve the entire environment, i.e., do not set HOME, SHELL,
USER or LOGNAME. The option is ignored if the option --login
is specified.
-s, --shell=shell
Run the specified shell instead of the default. The shell to
run is selected according to the following rules, in order:
* the shell specified with --shell
* the shell specified in the environment variable SHELL if the
--preserve-environment option is used
* the shell listed in the passwd entry of the target user
* /bin/sh
If the target user has a restricted shell (i.e., not listed in
/etc/shells), then the --shell option and the SHELL
environment variables are ignored unless the calling user is
root.
--session-command=command
Same as -c, but do not create a new session. (Discouraged.)
-w, --whitelist-environment=list
Don't reset the environment variables specified in the comma-
separated list when clearing the environment for --login. The
whitelist is ignored for the environment variables HOME,
SHELL, USER, LOGNAME, and PATH.
-V, --version
Display version information and exit.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
runuser reads the /etc/default/runuser and /etc/login.defs
configuration files. The following configuration items are relevant
for runuser:
ENV_PATH (string)
Defines the PATH environment variable for a regular user. The
default value is /usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin.
ENV_ROOTPATH (string)
ENV_SUPATH (string)
Defines the PATH environment variable for root. ENV_SUPATH takes
precedence. The default value is /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:
/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin.
ALWAYS_SET_PATH (boolean)
If set to yes and --login and --preserve-environment were not
specified runuser initializes PATH.
The environment variable PATH may be different on systems where /bin
and /sbin are merged into /usr; this variable is also affected by the
--login command-line option and the PAM system setting (e.g.,
pam_env(8)).
runuser normally returns the exit status of the command it executed.
If the command was killed by a signal, runuser returns the number of
the signal plus 128.
Exit status generated by runuser itself:
1 Generic error before executing the requested command
126 The requested command could not be executed
127 The requested command was not found
/etc/pam.d/runuser
default PAM configuration file
/etc/pam.d/runuser-l
PAM configuration file if --login is specified
/etc/default/runuser
runuser specific logindef config file
/etc/login.defs global logindef config file
This runuser command was derived from coreutils' su, which was based
on an implementation by David MacKenzie, and the Fedora runuser
command by Dan Walsh.
setpriv(1), su(1), login.defs(5), shells(5), pam(8)
The runuser command is part of the util-linux package and is
available from Linux Kernel Archive
⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.
This page is part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux
utilities) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
bug report for this manual page, send it to
util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
project's upstream Git repository
⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
2020-08-13. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
was found in the repository was 2020-08-12.) If you discover any
rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe
there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
util-linux July 2014 RUNUSER(1)
Pages that refer to this page: setpriv(1) , su(1) , credentials(7)