Run as different user under FreeBSD

Question

Is there a way in FreeBSD to (being root) run a command as unprivileged user, like nobody? Kind of like reverse of sudo. Oh and considering that 'nobody' has /usr/sbin/nologin as shell - so su is not an option.

Answer 1

sudo will allow you to run a command as another user.

sudo -u nobody <command>

will run as nobody, even if their login shell is not available.

Answer 2

You can su to an account with the nologin shell if you use the -m option.

Example:

su -m cthulhu -c '/usr/bin/scorpion-stare'

will run the SCORPION STARE command-line utility as the user cthulhu.