Linux – Sudo svn to update as other user

linuxsudosvn

I want our developers (including moi) to be able to run svn update as user www-data on our server, for file/directory permissions.

My solution was to grant access to run sudo -u www-data svn with NOPASSWD in visudo. I also added an alias for this command, and named it svn to make it transparent for our developers.

This works, but I am asked for svn credentials every time (it doesn't save, even if I tell it to). I am thinking about adding the -i parameter, though I thought I should check with you guys first 🙂

How do I make this as smooth as running the svn update command normally?

Clarification: It is working now. I just don't want to enter my svn credentials every time I run svn update 🙂

Best Answer

I am not entirely sure, but passing -H as an argument to sudo might take care of the credentials issue (being asked each time).

This will set the HOME environment variable to /root by default, so I would guess that then the svn client my then know to look in /root/.subversion for the auth information. Specify a different home directory for wherever the credentials should be for your specific case. Also, make sure whatever use can write/read to that file.

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who am i >> /var/log/svn/example.log will output under which user the command is running.

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From your hook script, call another script to do the svn updating. Limit www-data's sudo abilitys just JUST running that script. Don't accept any args.

From the script that will do the updating, make sure you su so the user that owns the local working copy you are updatin, like this:

in sudoers:

www-data ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/local/bin/update_my_thing

Hook script that get's called by svn and is running as www-data:

#/bin/sh
sudo /usr/local/bin/update_my_thing

Then in /usr/local/bin/update_my_thing

#/bin/sh
USER=usernam_that_owns_localsvncopy
su $USER -c 'svn up /path/to/localsvncopy'

Best Answer

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