How do I get sudo -u $user to use the users env?

Question

It seems when sudoing down that using sudo -u $user that the environment of root is still being used. How can I make sudo use the users environment? as a special note not all users that I will be using this on have login shells.

Answer 1

Try sudo -i -u $user

gerald@book:~$ env |grep HOME
HOME=/home/gerald
gerald@book:~$ sudo -u ubuntu env |grep HOME
HOME=/home/gerald
gerald@book:~$ sudo -i -u ubuntu env |grep HOME
HOME=/home/ubuntu

Answer 2

man sudoers on Debian mentions another possibility. Not sure which way around you want, but your question sounds like you would want to have the env_reset option from /etc/sudoers - the opposite is basically the env_keep list. In order to set the proper HOME you can use the -H option to sudo directly or, again in sudoers, with the always_set_home option.

Alternatively you could use env_file to specify an exact environment you want to pass. However, I think it is best if you check out the env_* options from man sudoers, because /etc/sudoers controls it all and that's the point to turn to.

Here's part of the context in which I use env_reset inside my sudoers file:

Defaults        !lecture
Defaults        env_reset
Defaults        syslog=auth
Defaults        log_year

Answer 3

When sudoing environment variables are not preserved.

In my case, I use here-document.

You put your actions such as my_script.sh inside your HERE DOCUMENT :

su -u some_user <<EOF
./my_script.sh
EOF

You should not put variable directly here, as they would be interpreted from your current user.

su -u some_user <<EOF
./my_script.sh $MY_VAR
EOF

If $MY_VAR is not set for the user running the script, it won't be set.

You variable must be called inside your scripts, or you must escape them with \.

Eg.

su -u some_user <<EOF
./my_script.sh \$MY_VAR
EOF

Here, $MY_VAR will have some_user contextual value.