I'm writing a init.d-script for an java-app. But the java-app should be run by another user. (The OS I'm using is Debian Squeeze.) I already got this: /bin/su - $USER - c "cd $PATH;echo $PASSWORD | $JAVA -Xmx256m -jar $PATH/app.jar -d > /dev/null" & PID=$! /bin/su - $USER - c "echo $PID > $PIDFILE" But this will of course only save the pid of the "/bin/su"-process instead of the pid of the created java-process.