As root and as part of the system boot sequence I run
/etc/init.d/oracle, which starts up oracle, among other things. In this
script, I also execute:

su - oracle -c /var/opt/idspoll

This command executes the .profile, which I need to do, but in the
..profile there is a sequence of commands [by the DBA] for the user to
select a menu item. I want to be able to skip this part, but execute
the rest.

I also have ksh version 88 and Solaris 5.9.

I have tried the standard case $- in ... and the [ -t 0 ] and the if
tty -s, but none of those work. I have also tried the above with the
"&" after the su.

Does anyone have any ideas that will work?