this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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Forgot to mention that creating a new user brings a lot of problems because of how that machine is configured and all the tools that would need to be added the new user's permission. In theory it would eventually work after some time working on it, but I'd like to know if there's a way to do it without creating users (or if it's impossible, so I can just go on with that only option)
@linux
There’s no way to run a command as another user if that user is not created.
https://linux.die.net/man/1/runuser
Edit:sudo is also an option but I like runuser for your use-case
@Oisteink in another comment (https://social.vivaldi.net/users/nirogu/statuses/111342629815373353) I explained why I'd prefer not to create another user, as it would require a lot of work to configure everything again for that command to work (it's a big process). I was thinking of hiding my sudo permissions from the program or something like that, if possible, because many things in the instance are only configured to be used with the root user, even if they don't require sudo. Anyway, I'm seeing that it might not be possible so creating a new user could be the only option 🙁
Read your other post and it seems to me that a rebuild of the system to accommodate non-root users would be my preferred solution. Trying to “work around“ issues like this are prone to break as the system is updated/changed. And you’re back to trying to figure out what’s changed and makes your script break.
@Oisteink yep, that seems the right thing to do. Honestly, most of the real problem was lazyness to reconfigure everything, and that's why I published the question. But now I'm convinced that that's the only way lol
Thanks for the help!
Laziness sparks innovation, and there could possibly be some other way to drop privileges. There’s loads of stuff I learn about Linux still - and my first install was summer 94
Keep at it!
You're not wrong for trying to find another solution. Unfortunately, I think, in this case, your up against fundamental Linux permissions. One possibility would be running the work in a container with reduced capabilities but, it really is going to depend on what behaviors you're trying to avoid.
Overall, it's likely a better idea to re-install because noone should be running stuff directly as root in the majority of production scenarios.
Linux privilege only understands user id’s and group id’s. These are mapped through /etc/passwd and /etc/groups. You will see in passwd that the root user has UID 0. Any account you create with UID 0 will have root privileges. So running the command specifying any user with UID!=0 will run without those privileges.
It’s also possible to set user on execution with setuid - but that won’t work on scripts only binary executables.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setuid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_identifier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_identifier