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I created a "system" user in Ubuntu 11.04 (adduser --system) for running certain cron jobs, but sometimes I want to test things out by manually running commands as that user. What's the easiest way to do this?

su doesn't work, because the user has "/bin/false" as its shell (which is fine for cron). I've been manually changing the shell to "/bin/bash" to do my testing and then changing it back again, but I wonder if there's an easier way.

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2 Answers

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I use su - targetuser -s /bin/bash from a root shell.

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That works, thanks! How did I miss the -s option? – EMP May 28 '11 at 3:54
you can also tack on a -c "your_command_here" option to pass the command you'd like to run versus waiting for the shell and then typing it at a new prompt. – dmourati May 28 '11 at 6:16
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Use sudo. This will work even if the user doesn't have a real shell.

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