Question

This is my simple bash:

cat test.sh

#!/bin/bash 
echo "hello"
su - root -c /path/to/script.sh <<EOF
password                              
EOF
whoami
echo "good bye"

But I get this error:

./test.sh
hello
su: must be run from a terminal
<current-user>
good bye

(OR)

cat test2.sh
#!/bin/bash 
echo "hello"
sudo su <<EOF
password                              
EOF
whoami
echo "good bye"

Again another error

(OR)

cat test3.sh
#!/bin/bash 
echo "hello"
su root <<EOF
password                              
EOF
whoami
echo "good bye"

again error...

when I try:

#!/bin/bash
echo "hello"
sudo -s <<EOF
<password>
echo Now I am root
id                                                                      
echo "yes!"
EOF
whoami
echo "good bye"

Then the output is:

./script.sh
hello
[sudo] password for <user>:

I also changed my script to:

#!/usr/bin/expect -f
spawn sudo -s <<EOF
expect "assword for user:"
send -- "password\r"                                                                      
expect eof

and output is:

spawn sudo -s <<EOF
[sudo] password for user: 
/bin/bash: <<EOF: command not found

Also which sh output is /bin/sh

How can I resolve the error in these three scripts?

Was it helpful?

Solution

Doing this kind of stuff is not safe or standard practice (in fact many consider it disasterous), it is really not a good idea to put a password in a script. A more standard approach would be simply to expect the whole script to be executed with root privileges, or just to have the script prompt for a password. You can also allow various commands to be run via sudo without a password by particular users by using the NOPASSWD option in /etc/suoders.

However, now that you are aware of the risks, it is possible to use sudo -kS to have sudo read the password from stdin:

sudo -kSs << EOF
password
whoami
echo "Not a good idea to have a password encoded in plain text"
EOF
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