Drush remote with switching shell users (sudo)

Question

Problem: I have a remote server with SSH access where the Drupal site can only be accessed as another user (www-data). My own shell user is not able to use drush directly for security reasons.

So how can I run all drush remote commands as www-data? I have sudo priviledged to execute commands as root.

My aliases.drushrc.php:

<?php

$aliases['accounting-phd'] = array(
  'root' => '/var/www/example/docroot',
  'uri' => 'example.com',
  'remote-host' => 'server.example.com',
  'ssh-options' => '-t',
  'path-aliases' => array(
    '%drush-script' => '/home/klausi/drush-remote.sh',
  ),
);

And in drush-remote.sh on the server:

#!/bin/bash
sudo su www-data -c "drush $@"

This prompts me for my password successfully, but then fails with

su: unrecognized option '--root=/var/www/example/docroot'
Usage: su [options] [LOGIN]

How can I separate the options from the su command?

Answer 1

Set 'remote-user' => 'www-data' in your site alias, and Drush will exec the remote Drush as the www-data user. ssh-copy-id [email protected], and you'll be all ready to go.

Answer 2

I'm having a similar issue I'm working with, and got a basic shell wrapper working with this code:

#!/bin/bash
sudo -u www-data -c 'drush6 $@'

I think the double quotes may have been your issue.