Running Python script as root (with sudo) - what is the username of the effective user?

Question

I\'ve recently began using ConfigParser() for my python scripts to add some functionality to them for config files. I know how to use it but I have a problem. My script need

Answer 1

If you run your script with sudo (sudo myscript.py) then the environment variable $USER will be root and the environment variable $SUDO_USER will be the name of the user who executed the command sudo myscript.py. This following is simply a clarification of the previous post by Cédric Julien. Consider the following scenario:

A linux user bob is logged into the system and possesses sudo privileges. He writes the following python script named myscript.py:

    #!/usr/bin/python
    import os
    print os.getenv("USER")
    print os.getenv("SUDO_USER")

He then makes the script executable with chmod +x myscript.py and then executes his script with sudo privileges with the command:

sudo ./myscript.py

The output of that program will be (using python 2.x.x):

    root
    bob

If bob runs the program sans sudo privileges with

./myscript.py

he will get the following output:

    bob
    None