Simulate permissions for non-login user

I want to perform some actions on behalf of some non-login users, such as e.g. www-data or uwsgi. My purpose is to test some permissions, check what dirs they can modify etc etc.

Is there a recommended way of going about this, other than creating a shell and password for them and su ?

edit:

When I try to su to the specific user with sudo:

admin@ip-192-10-30-111:~$ sudo su www-data
This account is currently not available.
admin@ip-192-10-30-111:~$ cat /etc/passwd | grep -i www-data
www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/usr/sbin/nologin
admin@ip-192-10-30-111:~$

Answer

You don’t need to create a shell and password for them, you can simply run su as root and use the --shell argument of su.

To run a bash shell as www-data run:

su --shell /bin/bash www-data

as root.

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Answer