Running fabric scripts as root

Question

I am trying to use fabric to automate some administrative work that I am doing on a couple of servers. The general flow is the following:

1. SSH with local user
2. run: sudo su - to become root (providing local user password again)
3. Do the work as root :)

Unfortunately using run('sudo su -') blocks execution of the scripts and allows user input. When I type exit or Ctrl+D the scipt resumes, but without root privileges.

I have seen a similar problem in Switching user in Fabric but I am restricted to sudo su - because I am not allowed to change the /etc/sudoers file which contains the following line:

localuser ALL = /usr/bin/su -

I browsed the source of fabric trying to find a workaround but with no success.

Answer 1

Having faced the same problem as yours, (only sudo su - user allowed by admin, sudo -u user -c cmd not allowed), here's my working solution with fabric:

from ilogue.fexpect import expect, expecting, run 

def sudosu(user, cmd):
    cmd += ' ;exit'
    prompts = []
    prompts += expect('bash', cmd)
    prompts += expect('assword:', env.password)

    with expecting(prompts):
        run('sudo su - ' + user)

def host_type():
    sudosu('root', 'uname -s')