topic Re: su from root to user account does not execute .profile and set up env in Operating System - HP-UX

su from root to user account does not execute .profile and set up env

Gus Mestousis — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 16:13:44 GMT

On HPUX 11.23 is there a setting that would prevent root from executing a user’s .profile?

I am running the following command:
su appuser -c "/home/appusers/script.sh /home/appuser"

Where appuser is the username and the script is script.sh located in the home directory and needs to have the argument of the location afterwards. If I login as the user the .profile sets up all the environmental variables and the script runs fine, but if I run it as root through that command it does not run because its environment is not set up correctly.

I don't think any special options need to get passed to su to run the .profile and set up the environment. I'm only having and issue on one single server. It runs fine on the others. I thought there might be some security setting somewhere preventing it but I checked /etc/default/security and they match up fine. Any ideas? Thanks!

Re: su from root to user account does not execute .profile and set up env

Alan Meyer_4 — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 16:19:01 GMT

To execute the users environment, you need a dash between the su and the username

su - username

Re: su from root to user account does not execute .profile and set up env

Rick Garland — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 16:21:30 GMT

Need that hyphen after the 'su'

su - newuser

With the hyphen you get the newuser env.
Without the hyphen you do not get the env

Re: su from root to user account does not execute .profile and set up env

Raj D. — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 16:25:47 GMT

Hi Gus ,

You can try the following ..

su appuser -c "/home/appusers/script.sh /home/appuser"

Cheers,
Raj.

Re: su from root to user account does not execute .profile and set up env

Raj D. — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 16:26:45 GMT

oops ..I too missed the hyphen..

# su - appuser -c "/home/appusers/script.sh /home/appuser"

Cheers,
Raj.

Re: su from root to user account does not execute .profile and set up env

yut — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 22:18:39 GMT

for execute .profile, run command su - username

-yut-

Re: su from root to user account does not execute .profile and set up env

morganelan — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 23:03:37 GMT

Become user test while retaining the previously exported environment:#su test

Become user test but change the environment to what would be expected if bin had originally logged in:#su - test

Re: su from root to user account does not execute .profile and set up env

Orhan Biyiklioglu — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 01:26:21 GMT

man 1 su

- If the - option is specified, the new shell starts up as if the new user had initiated a new login session. If the - option is omitted, the new shell starts as if a subshell was invoked.

Since login shells execute .profile you need to use - to make the new shell a login shell.

Re: su from root to user account does not execute .profile and set up env

Muthukumar_5 — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 02:43:16 GMT

When you are executing su appuser -c "command" from root user then, it will retain root user's exported environment settings only.

You can feel this as,

# su appuser -c "echo hi"
# hi

When we are executing su - appuser -c "command" from root user then, it will use new user's environment settings.

# su - appuser -c "echo hi"

# hi

hth.