*BSD News Article 74356


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Running a startup task as a user...
Date: 21 Jul 1996 08:56:06 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> wrote:

> The subject line basically says it. My daughter is setting up a MUX on my 
> auxiliary server, which needs to run under her username, not as root. I 
> can start the program in /etc/rc.local, but then some essential 
> initialization files are owned by root:wheel and cannot be accessed they 
> way they need to be.
> 
> I have a clumsy solution in the form of a shell script which I run from 
> rc.local:

Basically two options:

From /etc/rc.local, you can do:

	su someuser -c 'command to start on behalf of someuser'

(rc.local runs with root permissions, thus no password is needed to
`su'.)

Or, you can perhaps stuff the command as a background command into
someuser's .profile or .login script, if this is an option.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)