setuser.8

.\"
.\" Man page for setuser
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2002, 2004, Crispin Perdue
.\"
.\" You may distribute under the terms of the GNU General Public
.\" License
.\"
.\" cris@perdues.com
.\"
.TH setuser 8 "September 22, 2004"
.LO 1
.SH NAME
setuser \- Run a command as a specified user
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B setuser
.IR "user command " [ " arg ... " ]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.P
.B setuser
sets the uid, group id, and supplementary groups from the
given user name, then execs the given program with the
given command line arguments.  If the exec fails, this
process exits with nonzero status.  If it succeeds, it exits
with the status of the program exec replaces it with.
.P
Compared with "su", the setuser command is more oriented to
programmatic usage.  It does not start a shell, and it does not create
an extra process to control the one that runs as the given user -- a
process that may ignore various signals.  The command line arguments
are not re-parsed as in "su -c".  It just sets user and group ids, then
runs the requested command.
.P
If the effective user is already the requested one, this command
is a no-op.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
startstop(8), monitor(8)