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From: dgy@rtd.com (Don Yuniskis)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Running a startup task as a user...
Date: 21 Jul 1996 03:08:35 GMT
Organization: CICDO
Lines: 39
Message-ID: <4ss6vj$5a5@baygull.rtd.com>
References: <31F17A39.55F@www.play-hookey.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: seagull.rtd.com
In article <31F17A39.55F@www.play-hookey.com>,
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:
>
>#! /bin/sh
># Start the IsolationMUX
>#
>cd /usr/home/midnight/isolation/game
>./Startmux
>muxpid=`ps ax |grep Startmux |grep -v grep |awk '{print $1}'`
>if [ "X${muxpid}" != "X" ] ; then
> wait ${muxpid}
>fi
>chown midnight:midnight *
>chown midnight:midnight data/*
>
>This works, by the BFMI (Brute Force, Massive Ignorance) method. However,
>I would much rather have the Startmux script be run at system startup
>under the username of midnight, so the files will automatically have the
>right ownership assigned to them.
>
>I've looked through the Handbook and everything else I could think of,
>but found no way to accomplish this. At the same time, I know that qpop
>works by masquerading as the specific user it accepts mail for, so it can
>put the mail in that user's "me-only" mail file. Can I do the same during
>reboot, to start the MUX?
Why not create a script and install it setuid(midnight) to do the work?
Then, have rc.local invoke it (or, your daughter's .login??) Or, am I
missing something...?
--don