One liner for login using su

Question

I know you can use su to switch users within the terminal. As the account I use is non-root (without superuser permissions), it brings up a password prompt for the user I log into.

Is there a way to use su or something similar to login using a one line command? For example,

su -l USERNAME PASSWORD

Something like this could be used in a bash script for example.

richbl · Answer

While I wouldn't recommend it (unless the use case explicitly calls for it), you can use something like the following in a shell script:

"echo PASSWORD | sudo -S COMMAND"

Where PASSWORD is the user password, and COMMAND is the command to run at the elevated permissions level.

Note that the -S option is important, as it redirects input from term to standard input. See Sudo Manual for additional details.

One liner for login using su

One Answer

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question