how to spawn a process under different user

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Gabriel Genellina <gagsl-py2 at yahoo.com.ar> wrote:
>  En Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:27:05 -0300, Tim Harig <usernet at ilthio.net>
>  escribió:
> > On 2009-07-02, sanket <sanket.s.patel at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> sanket wrote:
> >>> > I am trying to use python's subprocess module to launch a process.
> >>> > but in order to do that I have to change the user.
> >> I am using python 2.4 on centos.
> >
> > I have never done this in python; but, using the normal system calls in C
> > the process is basically:
> > 	
> > 	1. fork() a  new process
> > 	2. the child process changes its user id with setreuid() and
> > 		possibly its group id with setregid()
> > 	3. then the child exec()s new process which replaces itself
> >
> > All of the necessary functions should be under the os module on POSIX
> > operating systems.
> 
>  How to do that using the subprocess module: write a function for item (2)
>  above and pass it as the preexec_fn argument to Popen. preexec_fn is
>  executed after fork() and before exec()

If you are forking 100s of processes a second you want to use the
method above, however I think it is easier to use su (assuming you
start off as root),

so instead of passing

  ['mycommand', 'my_arg1', 'my_arg2']

to Popen, pass

  ['su', '-', 'username', '-c', 'mycommand my_arg1 my_arg2']

There is some opportunity for quoting problems there, but it is easy!

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick