I have an application that runs in the evenings that uses 'ntpdate' to sync the machines clock.

My problem is testing 'ntpdate' as a non root user using sudo. The script I am running is executed as root. I want the script to check that everything is working by running 'ntpdate' as a non root user.

i have tried the following:

su dbs1;ntpdate -b <mytimeserver>;exit

but when the script executes it gives me a shell prompt and doesn't continue until I type exit.

Is there anyway I can execute commands in a script as another user without using su, what I need is a reverse sudo command??

Or does anyone know the correct syntax???

I would do something like
sudo -u dbs1 ntpdate -b <mytimeserver>

yeah, su is simply a switch user command sudo executes a command as another user