ExpanDrive

Ever need execute a command in the context of another user while running as root? Like running sudo from an unpriviledged account – except the other way around.

I had always thought ‘su‘ stood for “super user”, but as it turns out it actually is an acronym for “substitute user” – and it can do exactly what we want.

To execute a command in the context of another user, while running as superuser, you can run su -c, followed by the command, followed by ' - user'.

For example, if I wanted to make a script to pull in the contents of a git repository that is stored in the context of user ‘www’ I could run

su -c \"git --git-dir='/projects/www/.git' pull\" - www

For some more info on su check here