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From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Cron jobs running as something other than root
Keywords: Cron
Message-ID: <1990Aug30.145743.2949@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 30 Aug 90 14:57:43 GMT
References: <26d9499b.2715@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> <1990Aug29.110345.19301@cbnews.att.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 18

In article <1990Aug29.110345.19301@cbnews.att.com> mvadh@cbnews.att.com (andrew.d.hay) writes:
>In article <26d9499b.2715@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> gmartin@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Hackman) writes:
>[]
>"	Is there any way to make a job that runs from cron run under a 
>"        different login id???
>
>* * * * * su UID -c "command -args"

A potential problem with this is that if the user name mentioned happens
to have ksh as his login shell, his .profile will be executed. A workaround
is to use /bin/sh as the login shell but exec /bin/ksh in the user's
 .profile after exporting any necessary variables.  This is even more of
a problem if the "su -c user" appears in the /etc/rc files because these
commands run connected to the console causing any interactive prompts
to hang waiting for input.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us