RUNUSER

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: December 2009
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NAME

runuser - run a shell with substitute user and group IDs  

SYNOPSIS

runuser [OPTION]... [-] [USER [ARG]...]  

DESCRIPTION

Change the effective user id and group id to that of USER. Only session PAM hooks are run, and there is no password prompt. This command is useful only when run as the root user. If run as a non-root user without privilege to set user ID, the command will fail as the binary is not setuid. As runuser doesn't run auth and account PAM hooks, it runs with lower overhead than su.

-, -l, --login
make the shell a login shell, uses runuser-l PAM file instead of default one
-g --group=group
specify the primary group
-G --supp-group=group
specify a supplemental group
-c, --command=COMMAND
pass a single COMMAND to the shell with -c
--session-command=COMMAND
pass a single COMMAND to the shell with -c and do not create a new session
-f, --fast
pass -f to the shell (for csh or tcsh)
-m, --preserve-environment
do not reset environment variables
-p
same as -m
-s, --shell=SHELL
run SHELL if /etc/shells allows it
--help
display this help and exit
--version
output version information and exit

A mere - implies -l. If USER not given, assume root.  

AUTHOR

Written by David MacKenzie, Dan Walsh.  

REPORTING BUGS

Report runuser bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org
GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>  

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  

SEE ALSO

More detailed Texinfo documentation could be found by command
info coreutils aqsu invocationaq
since the command runuser is trimmed down version of command su.