[vox-tech] running service as a different user

[Tim Riley]

Patrick Stockton wrote:

> I'm testing around with a jabber server and don't want to run the
> service as root when I have the jabberd service start from an init script.
>
> named and mysql support user flags that tell it to run the process as a
> different user but jabberd doesn't seem to have a similar flag.
>
> Now I've created a user and group named jabber and plan on assigning
> permissions to the jabber directories to the jabber user.  The jabber
> user does not have log on rights to the system.  How can I have the
> system run the jabber service as a different user?  Is there some sort
> of wrapper I can use?
>

The "newgrp" program might be what you're looking for. It doesn't
change the user ID -- it changes the group ID -- but it provides the
security you're after.

First append your username to the "jabber" entry in "/etc/group".
Then use "echo" to send to "newgrp" the jabber executable on the stream:

$ echo "jabber_executable" | newgrp jabber

>
> I'm using Mandrake 8.2 and have compiled the jabber server from source.
>
> Patrick
>
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