CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashubuntuenvironment-variables
kenneth koontz
kenneth koontz

Reputation: 869

How do you give su the current user environment variables

I have a variable that is set through .bashrc.

In ~/.bashrc:

PROJ_HOME=~/Projects/stable

From a bash shell, I'd like to do something like this:

$ su -l kenneth -c 'echo $PROJ_HOME'

However, when I do this, the expected /home/kenneth/Projects/stable is not printed out.

Any ideas on how I can do this?

Upvotes: 24

Views: 41400

Answers (6)

tripleee
tripleee

Reputation: 189739

There are multiple steps here which you need to understand.

PROJ_HOME=~/Projects/stable

creates a variable in the current shell with the expanded value of the path. In other words, if you are logged in as user luser, the variable will contain something like /home/luser/Projects/stable.

If the intent is for su to get the value /home/kenneth/Projects/stable you either need to evaluate this expression as that user, or rewrite it to contain the expected value for kenneth before running sudo.

In the first instance, if the assignment is in a file /etc/project.rc you can simply

su -l kenneth -c '. /etc/project.rc; echo "$PROJECT_HOME"`

In the second case, maybe try something like

PROJECT_HOME=~kenneth/Projects/stable su -m -l kenneth -c 'echo "$PROJECT_HOME"'

though of course that unattractively hardcodes the value for Kenneth (and your shell might not actually have the facility to expand ~kenneth to the home directory of kenneth, in which case maybe use getent etc).

Upvotes: 0

Ashish Sharma
Ashish Sharma

Reputation: 672

I also fixed this issue and I fixed by exporting env variable into profile. Below is my sample code:

echo export runner_token=$(echo $resp_json | jq -r '.token') >> /etc/profile
su -p - ubuntu -c '$HOME/actions-runner/config.sh --url https://github.com/${gh_repo_user}/${gh_repo_name} --token "$runner_token"  --name MAC-AWS-RUNNER --labels ${gh_runner_labels}'

Upvotes: -1

Carlo
Carlo

Reputation: 1714

Try with su -m -l kenneth -c 'echo $PROJ_HOME'. -m should preserve the environment.

EDIT Reading your question one more time, I think I might understood it reversed. You might also try this: su -l kenneth -c '. /home/kenneth/.bashrc; echo $PROJ_HOME'.

Upvotes: 7

Dennis Williamson
Dennis Williamson

Reputation: 360395

You need to export the variable. You may not need to use the -m option to su to preserve the environment.

export PROJ_HOME=~/Projects/stable

Upvotes: 9

Earl Ruby
Earl Ruby

Reputation: 1590

Use single quotes around the command:

$ su -l kenneth -c 'echo $PROJ_PATH'

Double quotes interprets the value of $PROJ_PATH as seen by root (empty string), then executes the command "echo (empty string)" as the user kenneth.

Single quotes will pass 'echo $PROJ_PATH' as the command, and the value of $PROJ_PATH in kenneth's environment is what will be echoed.

Upvotes: -3

Dan V
Dan V

Reputation: 393

Have you tried the option su -m ?

-m, --preserve-environment
              do not reset environment variables

For example: su -m kenneth -c 'echo $PROJ_HOME'

Upvotes: 20

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