Services

Questions

How do I run a service as a specified user?

In the init script, su -c to the user you require.

25/10/2006 11:14 See Notes below…

How do I set the environment for a service?

Either:

  • Run the profile for the specified user e.g. source .bashrc or source .profile

  • Set-up the environment in the init script.

25/10/2006 11:14 See Notes below…

Notes

From: Paul B
Sent: 25 October 2006 11:04
To: Patrick Kimber
Subject: Running a daemon as non-root

Hi Patrick,

I had a random thought about what we were discussing (briefly) yesterday.  I
suggested that you should "su" to another user and source their profile..
however.. it occurred to me that you dont know where their profile is
(it could be ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc or similar depending on distro and
configuration).. nightmare..

Ive done some reading on the "su" command and found that if the first argument
to su is a hyphen, the current directory and environment will be changed to
what would be expected if the new user had actually logged on to a new session
(rather than just taking over an existing session).  This removes the
complications of setting up the environment for the user you have changed to.

example;
su - patrickk

Hope this helps..

Paul.