su, su -, sudo _and runuser_

[James Wilkinson]

Rainer Traut wrote:
> I think a better question is what is 'runuser' for?
> It has less options than su but does the same thing?!

runuser is a "trimmed down version of su" (according to the manpage).
Whereas su will allow you to get more permissions, runuser is a
lightweight version for root to disclaim root privileges, and run a
command with the permissions of a less-privileged user.

It seems to be used mostly in start-up scripts: you don't want your Web
server running as root in case someone finds a vulnerability. If the
server is merely running as apache, then an attacker would have to find
another vulnerability to become root.

Hope this helps,

James.

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