def check_user(user):
    if salt.utils.is_windows():
        return True
    if user == salt.utils.get_user():
        return True
    import pwd  # after confirming not running Windows
    try:
        pwuser = pwd.getpwnam(user)
        try:
            if hasattr(os, 'initgroups'):
                os.initgroups(user, pwuser.pw_gid)  # pylint: disable=minimum-python-version
            else:
                os.setgroups(salt.utils.get_gid_list(user, include_default=False))
            os.setgid(pwuser.pw_gid)
            os.setuid(pwuser.pw_uid)

            # We could just reset the whole environment but let's just override
            # the variables we can get from pwuser
            if 'HOME' in os.environ:
                os.environ['HOME'] = pwuser.pw_dir

            if 'SHELL' in os.environ:
                os.environ['SHELL'] = pwuser.pw_shell

            for envvar in ('USER', 'LOGNAME'):
                if envvar in os.environ:
                    os.environ[envvar] = pwuser.pw_name

        except OSError:
            msg = 'Salt configured to run as user "{0}" but unable to switch.'
            msg = msg.format(user)
            if is_console_configured():
                log.critical(msg)
            else:
                sys.stderr.write("CRITICAL: {0}\n".format(msg))
            return False
    except KeyError:
        msg = 'User not found: "{0}"'.format(user)
        if is_console_configured():
            log.critical(msg)
        else:
            sys.stderr.write("CRITICAL: {0}\n".format(msg))
        return False
    return True
Check user and assign process uid/gid.
dataset/ETHPy150Open saltstack/salt/salt/utils/verify.py/check_user