Serena Release Automation®User's Guide
User Impersonation

The su command (as used by Serena Release Automation) enables a user to start a shell as another user (process steps can be considered individual shells). When you configure a process step (see the section called “Process Editor”), you can tell Serena Release Automation to use impersonation for the step. By default, su is used but you can use sudo instead. To configure impersonation, you supply the user name required by the target host. When the impersonation-configured process step runs, the su or sudo command runs the step as the impersonated user. Each step that needs user impersonation must be configured independently.

Before sudo can be used, impersonation privileges must be defined in the /etc/sudoers file. When you configure sudoers, ensure that the impersonating user does not have to supply a password. Typically, you would configure the /etc/sudoers file like this:

Defaults:X !requiretty 

X ALL=(Y) NOPASSWD: ALL 

where X and Y are user names. Configured this way, user X can run any command as user Y without supplying a password.

su and sudo maintain a record in the system logs of all of their activity. su can be used without configuring the sudoers file. For information about su/sudo see the Unix/Linux documentation.