Unix & Linux: How to switch between users on one terminal? The Question: I'd like to log in as a different user without logging out of the current one (on the same terminal). How do I do that? Solutions: Please watch the whole video to see all solutions, in order of how many people found them helpful == This solution helped 51 people == Generally you use sudo to launch a new shell as the user you want; the -u flag lets you specify the username you want: [mrozekma@etudes-1 ~] % whoami mrozekma [mrozekma@etudes-1 ~] % sudo -u nobody zsh [nobody@etudes-1 ~] % whoami nobody There are more circuitous ways if you don't have sudo access, like ssh username@localhost, but I think sudo is probably simplest if it's installed and you have permission to use it == This solution helped 646 people == How about using the su command? $ whoami user1 $ su - user2 Password: $ whoami user2 $ exit logout If you want to log in as root, there's no need to specify username: $ whoami user1 $ su - Password: $ whoami root $ exit logout Generally, you can use sudo to launch a new shell as the user you want; the - u flag lets you specify the username you want: $ whoami user1 $ sudo -u user2 zsh $ whoami user2 There are more circuitous ways if you don't have sudo access, like ssh username@localhost, but sudo is probably simplest, provided that it's installed and you have permission to use it. == This solution helped 28 people == $ whoami This command prints the current user. To change users, we will have to use this command (followed by the user's password): $ su secondUser Password: After entering the correct password, you will be logged in as the specified user (which you can check by rerunning whoami. == This solution helped 9 people == To switch the terminal session to a different user, where that user can't exit back into the original user, use exec: $|# exec su - [username] This will technically login the new user in a new term process, and close out the current one. That way when the user attempts exit or Ctrl-D, the terminal will close as though that user was the one who instantiated it, i.e., the user can't exit back into the original user's term. Kind of pointless, considering they can still just start a new terminal session and automatically be in the original user term login, but there it is. EDIT: For what it's worth, you can use linux vlock command in your ~/.bashrc to lock terminal sessions by default, requiring the password of the term session user to unlock. This would somewhat prevent the aforementioned term restart under the original user context, given the term isn't instantiated using the non-default ~/.bashrc of the user, as configured. == This solution helped 18 people == If you're running Ubuntu, and if the user you want to login as doesn't have a password set: sudo su - username Enter your own password and you should be set. Of course, this requires that your user has rights to gain root privileges with sudo. With thanks & praise to God, and with thanks to the many people who have made this project possible! | Content (except music & images) licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 | Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music | Images: https://stocksnap.io/license & others | With thanks to user tshepang (https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/688), user SYANiDE (https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/83995), user Sundae (https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/26196), user Pratt (https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/2458), user Michael Mrozek (https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/73), user Maksim Luzik (https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/235665), user Hopping Bunny (https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/79890), user HalosGhost (https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/65525), user azatar (https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/87082), user Ashish Saini (https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/78885), user andilabs (https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/50381), and the Stack Exchange Network (http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3568). Trademarks are property of their respective owners. Disclaimer: All information is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. You are responsible for your own actions. Please contact me if anything is amiss at Roel D.OT VandePaar A.T gmail.com.