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

[Gus Mestousis]

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!

[Alan Meyer_4]

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

su - username

[Rick Garland]

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

[Raj D.]

Hi Gus ,

You can try the following ..

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


Cheers,
Raj.

[Raj D.]

oops ..I too missed the hyphen..

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

Cheers,
Raj.

[yut]

for execute .profile, run command su - username


-yut-

[morganelan]

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

[Orhan Biyiklioglu]

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.

[Muthukumar_5]

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.