[NCLUG] starting a script at startup as specific user?

[Mark Fassler]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 11:44:06PM -0600, Gordon Forsythe wrote:
> Hi everyone...can someone tell me a simple way to have a script run as a
> specific user when the box boots?  httpd runs as apache, so I am trying to
> figure out a way to do this for other things.  A friend told me to check
> init.d and rc.d...httpd is in init.d, but I do not see where in the script
> the user is specified.  I may be looking at this from the wrong angle too.
> Thanks in advance!
>   Gordon


Apache actually starts as root, then becomes another user; who this other 
user is is set in httpd.conf, so that's rather specific to apache.  

If you're using RedHat, take a look at how named starts up:  

	daemon named -u named

the "-u" argument specifies the user to start as.  

The "daemon" command isn't a normal bash command, but comes from 
/etc/rc.d/init.d/functions (again, I'm assuming RedHat).  You might want 
to use /etc/rc.d/init.d/named as an example.  

Whether or not you're using RedHat, you can also do something simple like 
this:

	su user -c command_to_run

(This is essentially what the daemon() function does.)

--
Mark Fassler
fassler at monkeysoft.net