execute commands as user after Vagrant provisioning

There are some commands that have to be run as a normal user after the initial provisioning. I thought I could do this using a separate shell script and the command su --login -c <command> vagrant, but it's not getting the user's path or other environment settings from .bashrc.

e.g.:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
su --login -c "rbenv install 2.0.0-p353" vagrant
su --login -c "rbenv global 2.0.0-p353" vagrant
su --login -c "gem update --system" vagrant
su --login -c "yes | gem update" vagrant
su --login -c "gem install rdoc" vagrant
su --login -c "gem install rails pg" vagrant

Is there a way to do this? Maybe it has to be done with another provisioning tool like Puppet or Chef? I've thought of creating another shell script that sources the .bashrc, copying it to the box using a :file provisioner and executing the commands like that, but it seems sort of like a hack.

What's the right way to do this?

You should be able to do this using the Vagrant Shell provisioner, e.g.

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  $script = <<-SCRIPT
  rbenv install 2.0.0-p353
  rbenv global 2.0.0-p353
  gem update --system
  yes | gem update
  gem install rdoc
  gem install rails pg
  SCRIPT

  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: $script, privileged: false
end

The key is to specify privileged: false so that it will use the default user and not root.

I wanted to document a solution for situations where the shell provisioner must run commands as a non-root user in a login shell:

Put your provisioning commands into a shell script (e.g. 'bootstrap.sh'):

#! /bin/bash

rbenv install 2.0.0-p353
rbenv global 2.0.0-p353
gem update --system
yes | gem update
gem install rdoc
gem install rails pg

Then in your Vagrantfile:

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|

  $script = "/bin/bash --login /vagrant/bootstrap.sh"
  config.vm.provision :shell, privileged: false, inline: $script

end

You should replace the /vagrant/bootstrap.sh path with the correct path for your provisioning script inside the vagrant machine.

I've used this solution specifically to get rvm commands to work while provisioning with Vagrant.

Sometimes you want to mix privileged commands and non-privileged commands. If your situation calls for this use runuser.

runuser -l vagrant -c 'command'