RUNUSER(1) User Commands RUNUSER(1)
NAME
runuser - run a command with substitute user and group ID
SYNOPSIS
runuser [options] -u user command [argument...]
runuser [options] [-] [ user [argument...] ]
DESCRIPTION
runuser allows to run commands with substitute user and group ID. If the option -u not given, fallback to su
compatible semantic and shell is executed. The difference between the commands runuser and su is that runuser
does not ask for password (because it may be executed by root user only) and it uses a different PAM configu‐
ration. The command runuser does not have to be installed with suid permissions.
When called without arguments runuser defaults to running an interactive shell as root.
For backward compatibility runuser defaults to not change the current directory and to only set the environ‐
ment variables HOME and SHELL (plus USER and LOGNAME if the target user is not root). This version of runuser
uses PAM for session management.
OPTIONS
-c command, --command=command
Pass command to the shell with the -c option.
--session-command=command
Same as -c but do not create a new session (discouraged).
-f, --fast
Pass -f to the shell which may or may not be useful depending on the shell.
-g, --group=group
specify the primary group, this option is allowed for root user only
-G, --supp-group=group
Specify a supplemental group. This option is available to the root user only. The first specified
supplementary group is also used as a primary group if the option --group is unspecified.
-, -l, --login
Starts the shell as login shell with an environment similar to a real login:
o clears all environment variables except for TERM
o initializes the environment variables HOME, SHELL, USER, LOGNAME, PATH
o changes to the target user's home directory
o sets argv[0] of the shell to '-' in order to make the shell a login shell
-m, -p, --preserve-environment
Preserves the whole environment, ie does not set HOME, SHELL, USER nor LOGNAME. The option is ignored
if the option --login is specified.
-s SHELL, --shell=SHELL
Runs the specified shell instead of the default. The shell to run is selected according to the follow‐
ing rules in order:
--help Display help text and exit.
--version
Display version information and exit.
CONFIG FILES
runuser reads the /etc/default/runuser and /etc/login.defs configuration files. The following configuration
items are relevant for runuser:
ENV_PATH (string)
Defines the PATH environment variable for a regular user. The default value is /usr/local/bin:/bin:
/usr/bin.
ENV_ROOTPATH (string)
ENV_SUPATH (string)
Defines the PATH environment variable for root. The default value is /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:
/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin.
ALWAYS_SET_PATH (boolean)
If set to yes and --login and --preserve-environment were not specified runuser initializes PATH.
EXIT STATUS
runuser normally returns the exit status of the command it executed. If the command was killed by a signal,
runuser returns the number of the signal plus 128.
Exit status generated by runuser itself:
1 Generic error before executing the requested command
126 The requested command could not be executed
127 The requested command could was not found
FILES
/etc/pam.d/runuser
default PAM configuration file
/etc/pam.d/runuser-l
PAM configuration file if --login is specified
/etc/default/runuser
runuser specific logindef config file
/etc/login.defs global logindef config file
SEE ALSO
pam(8), shells(5), login.defs(5), su(1)
AUTHOR
Derived from coreutils' su which was based on an implemenation from David MacKenzie and Fedora runuser command
from Dan Walsh.
AVAILABILITY
The runuser command is part of the util-linux package and is available from Linux Kernel Archive ⟨ftp://
ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.
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