Run compile command make as another user

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

Hello

I'm trying to compile LibreOffice core from github.com. But this can - as far as I know - not be done as root user. So I compiled it as login user (the user as I log in) and compilation works.

Now I try to compile LibreOffice core as a user I created using useradd:

useradd -r -U -m -d /var/lib/anotheruser -s /bin/false anotheruser

Then I try to run the compile commands using sudo -u. And it fails.

I'm not an experienced bash user. But I realized that some environment variables doesn't come from anotheruser but from the login user that starts the command sudo -u. So when I run (as login user)

sudo -u lool /bin/bash -c "echo `id -u`"

the id of the login user is returned and not the id of anotheruser. Why?

Any hints are welcome. Kind regards.

2

Hi,

I would suspect that if you wanted to run a compile, you'd need to have a shell set such as /bin/bash.

From memory /bin/false will just run an "exit" command and log you out.

Regards

Gull04

3

You should be using code tags to separate the code fragments from the rest of your post.

The problem is you are doing:

echo `id -u`

which is a completely superfluous use of echo in this case. It looks to me as though the part in back-ticks ( `id -u` ) is being processed by the parent shell before being sent to the sudo sub-process. Try

sudo -u lool /bin/bash -c "id -u"

instead.

Andrew