wpas

wpas is a companion to wp-cli. It allows you to run the wp command under another user, in case you are root and that is the only (convenient) user on your host.

Usage

Usage:

wpas <username> <...parameters>

Using wpas is easy. The command is wpas and it needs at least 2 arguments. The first is the user and the rest is what gets passed to wp. So everything after the wpas <username> part is the same as it would be with the wp command.

This script only works if you are root. If not, use wp directly.

Installation

Grab the script.

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/realrellek/wpas/main/wpas.sh

Make it executable.

chmod +x ./wpas.sh

Move it to a convenient location (i.e., to where wp is too)

mv ./wpas.sh /usr/local/bin/wpas

Here's the copy-paste friendly version:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/realrellek/wpas/main/wpas.sh
chmod +x ./wpas.sh
mv ./wpas.sh /usr/local/bin/wpas

Why is this?

So maybe you administrate a server and your only “real” user is root. There may or may not be other users, e.g., for php-fpm or at least www-data. But those may not have a login shell, in which case things can get a little interesting.

wp does not (really) want you to run it as root, and for good reason. It could mess up file permissions if you update a plugin or regenerate thumbnails. So don't do it.

What you would want to do instead is to run wp as the user the web server would run under too. But this can be a pain to remember the commands. With wpas, you don't have to remember.

System requirements

Obviously, you need wp to work as intended.

Otherwise, you should be fine with a *nix machine running your stuff. wpas favors sudo but can fall back to runuser (which is Linux-only) and even su.