/suq

Sanely run commands as root without sudo

Primary LanguagePerl

suq

http://github.com/dbb/suq

Description

suq is a Perl script that uses the command line arguments passed to it to

form a properly quoted command string that is then passed to su to be

executed as root. It is desgined as an alternative to the common usage of

sudo to execute a single command with root privileges. This is useful for

systems on which sudo is not installed or is unnecessary.

Usage

suq [options] [command]

[options] is one of --help or --version

[command] is the string that will be executed with root permissions

If an [option] is found, the rest of the command string will be ignored.

Environment variables

suq's behavior is controlled by the following environment variables:

  • SUQ_NOLOGIN=1 do not pass '-l' to su
  • SUQ_PRESERVE=1 pass "-m" to su
  • SUQ_SHELL='shell' pass "-s shell" to su
  • SUQ_SIMULATE=1 print the command; don't run it
  • SUQ_USER='name' run command as "name" instead of root

Set the environment variable SUQ_SIMULATE in order to prevent suq from

actually executing the command (the command will only be printed).

Example:

    % export SUQ_SIMULATE=1; suq perl -le 'print "foo"'
    su -l -c 'perl -le '\''print "foo"'\' root
    %

The default value of all aforementioned ENV variables is undefined. Setting a

value to '' or 0 will cause it to be ignored (i.e. return it to the default

value) except for SUQ_USER, which is treated as a string. To reset it:

export SUQ_USER='root'

Dependencies

  • Sting::ShellQuote (Debian package libstring-shellquote-perl)
  • Perl 5.10 or newer
  • su (Debian package login)

Bugs

Visit https://github.com/dbb/suq for the README or to report any issues.