DOAS(1)

NAME
doas - execute commands as another user

SYNOPSIS
doas [-nSs] [-a style] [-C config] [-u user] [--] command [args]

DESCRIPTION
The doas utility executes the given command as another user. The command argument is mandatory unless -C, -S, or -s is specified.

The options are as follows:

-a style
    Use the specified authentication style when validating the user, as allowed by /etc/login.conf. A list of doas-specific authentication methods may be configured by adding an ‘auth-doas’ entry in login.conf(5).

-C config
    Parse and check the configuration file config, then exit. If command is supplied, doas will also perform command matching. In the latter case either ‘permit’, ‘permit nopass’ or ‘deny’ will be printed on standard output, depending on command matching results. No command is executed.

-n  Non interactive mode, fail if doas would prompt for password.

-S  Same as -s but simulates a full login. Please note this may result in doas applying resource limits to the user based on the target user's login class. However, environment variables applicable to the target user are still stripped, unless KEEPENV is specified.

-s  Execute the shell from SHELL or /etc/passwd.

-u user
    Execute the command as user. The default is root. Please note: On some systems multiple usernames can resolve to one UID. For example, root and toor both resolve to UID 0 on FreeBSD. Please see the "as" syntax section of the doas.conf manual page for details on how doas handles this situation.

--  Any dashes after a combined double dash (--) will be interpreted as part of the command to be run or its parameters. Not an argument passed to doas itself.

EXIT STATUS
It may fail for one of the following reasons:

•   The config file @DOAS_CONF@ could not be parsed.
•   The user attempted to run a command which is not permitted.
•   The password was incorrect.
•   The specified command was not found or is not executable.

BUGS
On Linux it is not possible to pipe output from other commands into commands run by doas. For example, "echo hello | doas tee abc" would not work on Linux. On other platforms, such as FreeBSD, output from another command can be piped to programs run by doas.

SEE ALSO
su(1), doas.conf(5)

HISTORY
The doas command first appeared in OpenBSD 5.8.

AUTHORS
Ted Unangst <tedu@openbsd.org>