su -session-command error

Question

i have a very simple and annoying problem, i'm trying to start my database as a specific user, but *su --session-comman*d fail to me!

##############################

#!/bin/bash

objectdb-start.sh

OBJECTDB_HOME=/opt/java-tools/objectdb-2.3.0_04
JAVA_USER=javauser

CMD="su --session-command=\"${OBJECTDB_HOME}/bin/objectdb.sh start\" ${JAVA_USER}"

echo $CMD
$CMD

##############################

Then a got this error:

[root@Taturana bin]# ./objectdb-start.sh
su --session-command="/opt/java-tools/objectdb-2.3.0_04/bin/objectdb.sh start" javauser
su: user start" does not exist

Any idea?

PS: i'm using Fedora 15

Answer 1

The escaped double quotes are causing you trouble. They do not function on the command line as you obviously expect them to. Therefore the shell sees the space and interprets start" as the second argument to su, specifying the username.

Is echoing the command line on the console really important? You'd probably be better off with something like this:

su --session-command="${OBJECTDB_HOME}/bin/objectdb.sh start" $JAVA_USER

Or use sudo instead:

sudo -u $JAVA_USER $OBJECTDB_HOME/bin/objectdb.sh start