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what does this command mean "sudo su - -s /bin/bash jenkins"

I couldn't understand what this command does "sudo su - -s /bin/bash jenkins". Is it log in as jenkins user under the current shell?

root@monitor:/home/jyu$ su - jenkins
su: user - does not exist
root@monitor:/home/jyu$ cat /etc/passwd | grep jenkins
root@monitor:/home/jyu$ sudo su - -s /bin/bash jenkins
Last login: Fri Jul 15 17:17:09 UTC 2016 on pts/1
[jenkins@monitor ~]$ whoami
jenkins
[jenkins@monitor ~]$ ls -alth
total 56K
-rw------- 1 jenkins jenkins 8.5K Jul 15 17:44 .bash_history
drwx------ 2 jenkins jenkins 4.0K Jul 15 16:55 .ssh
drwxr-xr-x 4 jenkins jenkins 4.0K Jul 15 16:55 .
-rw------- 1 jenkins jenkins 11K Jul 15 16:55 .viminfo
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4.0K May 27 22:26 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 jenkins jenkins 4.0K Jul 8 2014 .java
-rw-r--r-- 1 jenkins jenkins 18 Jul 3 2014 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r-- 1 jenkins jenkins 124 Jul 3 2014 .bashrc
-rw-r--r-- 1 jenkins jenkins 171 Jul 3 2014 .kshrc
-rw-r--r-- 1 jenkins jenkins 176 Jul 3 2014 .bash_profile
[jenkins@monitor ~]$

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

woolmilkporc

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Jason Yu

ASKER

Yes, you are right. In my environment, su is an alias of "su -".

root@monitor:/home/jyu$ alias su
alias su='su -'
root@monitor:/home/jyu$

woolmilkporc

That's why "su - jenkins" throws an error.

what does this command mean &quot;sudo su - -s /bin/bash jenkins&quot;

what does this command mean "sudo su - -s /bin/bash jenkins"