can I run 'su' in the middle of a bash script?

Question

can I change/su user in the middle of a script?

if [ \"$user\" == \"\" ]; then
  echo \"Enter the table name\";
  read user
fi

gunzip *
chown postgres *
su pos         


        

Answer 1

Not like this. su will invoke a process, which defaults to a shell. On the command line, this shell will be interactive, so you can enter commands. In the context of a script, the shell will end right away (because it has nothing to do).

With

su user -c command

command will be executed as user - if the su succeeds, which is generally only the case with password-less users or when running the script as root.

Use sudo for a better and more fine-grained approach.