How can I execute a series of commands in a bash subshell as another user using sudo?

Question

I'm writing a bash script that needs to sudo multiple commands. I can do this:

( whoami ; whoami ) 

but I can't do this:

sudo ( whoami ; whoami ) 

How do I solve this?

Answer 1

You can pass the commands as standard input into sudo'ed bash with a here document:

sudo bash <<"EOF" whoami id EOF 

This way there is no need to fiddle with correct quoting, especially if you have multiple levels, e.g.:

sudo bash <<"EOF" whoami echo $USER ~ sudo -u apache bash <<"DOF" whoami echo $USER ~ DOF EOF 

Produces:

root root /root apache apache /usr/share/httpd 

(Note that you can't indent the inner terminator — it has to be alone on its line. If you want to use indentation in a here document, you can use <<- instead of <<, but then you must indent with tabs, not spaces.)

Answer 2

Run a shell inside sudo: sudo bash -c 'whoami; whoami'

You can use any character except ' itself inside the single quotes. If you really want to have a single quote in that command, use '\'' (which technically is: end single-quote literal, literal ' character, start single-quoted literal; but effectively this is a way to inject a single quote in a single-quoted literal string).