Cron Job not executing the Shell Script that has Command to execute as another user

Question

I have a shell script which executes a command using another user

Shell Script:

su user1 -c 'command'

When I invoke this in the terminal its fine, it ask for Password and things go well.

I scheduled this using a cron job like this

sudo crontab -e

*/5 * * * * /path/to/shellscript.sh

But the cronjob doesn't seems to execute the above command "su user1 -c 'command'", all the echo statements and loops executes.

Note: I am using Mac OS X

Answer 1

It need password. You may need to keep password in a text file do as follows

echo password | su user1 -c 'command'

Answer 2

As you are running the script as another user, you need to supply the password in the shell script as

#!/bin/sh
PASSWORD="pass123"
echo PASSWORD>su user1 -c 'command'

Then when you run the cron it shall pick up the command as that user, due to the presence of credentials.