Using sudo in LXC containers for accounts without valid shell

Question

For accounts, in containers, that have no shell (e.g. user www-data) I'd like to use sudo, without ending up in /root/ folder.

Why does this only work after using it for the second time ? How can I avoid ending up in /root/ dir with sudo ?

$ sudo lxc-attach -n hugo
root@hugo:~# sudo -H -u golanger /bin/bash && cd /home/golanger
golanger@hugo:/root$
golanger@hugo:/root$ exit
root@hugo:/home/golanger# sudo -H -u golanger /bin/bash && cd /home/golanger
golanger@hugo:~$ 

Answer 1

In sudo -H -u golanger /bin/bash && cd /home/golanger, your current shell executes sudo -H -u golanger /bin/bash and when that finishes successfully, runs cd /home/golanger. So the cd doesn't affect the sudo command.

sudo itself doesn't reset the working directory (-H only resets the home directory, not the current working directory). If you want to make sudo cd to the home directory of the target user, there are no command-line options which can directly do the job. You'll have to workaround it:

sudo -H -u golanger /bin/sh -c 'cd; /bin/bash'

Note that, with the -i option, sudo will try to cd to the home directory of the target user, but it also uses the user's login shell, which will make it fail in this case.