Execute Script from rc.local as User – Ubuntu Startup Script Guide

rc.localstartup-scriptsUbuntu

I want to execute a script every time my server start up. The problem is that I need to be a certain user to execute the script, if I try to do it as root it cant find certain packages (such as ruby).

I try to change to xxx user01.

sudo su user01
/etc/init.d/script start

This doesn't work however.

Best Answer

Running sudo su user01 in a script does not mean the following commands are sent to the resultant shell. In fact, it likely means a new shell is spawned as user01, which never exits!

Two things:

You can execute a command as another user either by passing the -c 'command...' argument to su, like su user01 -c '/etc/init.d/script start'.
Starting a service that uses /etc/init.d from rc.local isn't the correct thing to do. You want to use enable the service at startup using your distribution tools, like chkconfig or update-rc.d. You also don't want jobs in /etc/init.d that shouldn't be started as root. The jobs themselves can feel free to fork to another user account, but should be invoked by root.

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rc.local is run at system boot, so well before a user logs on.

You have two options for running the script. One is to use visudo(8) to set up the command to allow to be run, with a NOPASSWD: tag in the command entry, and then just use sudo to start the command, perhaps from /etc/profile and whatever other files are needed for whichever shells people might use. It might be as simple as dropping something in /etc/profile.d/ if that exists. Eg, if everyone who logs in will be in group video then when you run visudo you'd want a rule like:

%video  ALL=NOPASSWD: /path/to/Linux_Asus_AI_remote.py

and then you'd invoke with:

sudo /path/to/Linux_Asus_AI_remote.py

The other option is to use pam_exec to run a command after login while still root; it's cleaner but more dangerous because if you make mistakes you can hose your system and be unable to login. If you want to examine this, read up on the PAM modules and how authentication and authorisation work and look in /etc/pam.d/; also, think carefully about how you'll restrict this to only happen for appropriate users.

Whichever method you choose, you'll probably want to make sure that this does not happen if logging in as root, to reduce the gunk that's involved in letting the admin user get into the system.

Linux – How to give execute permissions to Apache2 user and NOT to everyone else

chown the files to whatever your Apache group is called (Usually www-data) and set permissions to only give user/group permissions:

chown -R www-data:www-data /path/to/cgi-bin
chmod -R 764 /path/to/cgi-bin

That sets it so only the www-data user and group can write the file, and only the www-data user can execute the file, everyone can read.

Best Answer

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