How to run a command as www-data in Docker image

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1

Hi;

It is more a curiosity than an issue but I was wondering how you and you and maybe you too run command as www-data inside the Docker image ?

Right now, when it require I install sudo than

such as an example :

sudo - www-data occ app:list

but I see the command su so I would like to know if I’m just doing something wrong because any variation such as

su - www-data occ app:list
su www-data occ app:list
su - www-data -c ‘occ app:list’
su www-data -c “occ app:list”

simply repeat over and over :
This account is currently not available.

So if someones want to enlighten me :wink:

2

su and sudo are difference commands, and so will behave differently. Try running man su and man sudo and comparing the difference.

3

Correct syntax is sudo -u www-data php occ command

There is also an app (non official) that is a web occ console.

Hope this help

4

The cause of the issue may be that the www-data user has no shell configured :
/bin/false (or some other variant) in /etc/passwd
The su command, called with the - opt, tries to open a shell, but it get denied by the system.
hence the error message.

solution, If you really have no choice :

  • Change temporarily the shell of the www-data user to be able to use it with su
    (Use chsh or edit /etc/passwd directly. )

As said before me, best use case for occ is to use it with sudo command

su - www-data -c ‘occ app:list’

This is the good one BTW

Regards

5

from the hosts cli.

docker exec --user www-data <nextcloud-container-name> php occ <your-command>

no need to login the container.

8 Likes
6

I agree with @Reiner_Nippes, no need to log into the container :slight_smile:

7

I ran into this issue in kubernetes after an upgrade and this topic came up on Google so I just want to add my solution.

When you open a shell in the kubernetes container you must use su -p like this;

chsh -s /bin/bash www-data
su -p www-data -c 'php occ'
8

I’m way late to the game here, but I find this alias very helpful:

alias occ="docker exec --user www-data $(docker ps | grep nextcloud_nextcloud | awk '{print $11}') php occ"

I added this to my ~/.bash_aliases and now I don’t have to google how to do it every time I need to use the cli.

You can execute occ commands like this:

$ occ -V
Nextcloud 28.0.1

$ occ status
  - installed: true
  - version: 28.0.1.1
  - versionstring: 28.0.1
  - edition: 
  - maintenance: false
  - needsDbUpgrade: false
  - productname: Nextcloud
  - extendedSupport: false

Hope this helps someone else too :smile:

1 Like