The cookbook has the answer [1] :) TLDR: If you're running upstart 1.4 or later, you can use the 'setuid' and 'setgid' stanzas. Otherwise you'll have to use su, sudo or start-stop-daemon. Start-stop-daemon is recommended, because su and sudo do a bunch of extra stuff to the PAM session that is probably unnecessary for a daemon process. Cheers, Evan [1] <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#changing-user">http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#changing-user</a> <div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 8:28 AM, Tom <<a href="mailto:tommedema@gmail.com">tommedema@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Thanks Even. I will read through the cookbook and hopefully it will indeed answer my questions. About the su command, I read that this was the only way to run a process as an unprivileged user with upstart here: <a href="http://superuser.com/questions/213416/running-upstart-jobs-as-unprivileged-users" target="_blank">http://superuser.com/questions/213416/running-upstart-jobs-as-unprivileged-users</a> "A future release of Upstart will have native support for that, but for now, you can use something like: exec su -s /bin/sh -c 'exec "$0" "$@"' username -- /path/to/command [parameters...]" Is there a better way of doing this nowadays? Tom 2012/3/17 Evan Huus <<a href="mailto:eapache@gmail.com">eapache@gmail.com</a>>: <div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5">> Hi Tom, > > As per the upstart cookbook [1], you'll likely need a few extra stanzas. > > According to the 'expect' section [2] you'll probably need to add 'expect > daemon' to allow upstart to track the proper process ID when mongodb forks > in order to daemonize. > > Also, I'm not sure what you're trying to do with the "su -s /bin/sh -c > exec". If you're trying to change users [3] you probably shouldn't be using > su. If you need the program to be run in a shell environment for some > reason, you can simply use 'script' [4] instead of exec. If you're simply > using it to fork so that it daemonizes properly instead of only forking > once, you can change 'expect daemon' to 'expect fork' and upstart will track > the process ID correctly. > > There are a lot of good resources in the cookbook [1], so hopefully it will > answer any other questions you might have. > > Cheers, > Evan > > [1] <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/" target="_blank">http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/</a> > [2] <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#expect" target="_blank">http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#expect</a> > [3] <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#changing-user" target="_blank">http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#changing-user</a> > [4] <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#script" target="_blank">http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#script</a> > > On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 7:32 AM, Tom <<a href="mailto:tommedema@gmail.com">tommedema@gmail.com</a>> wrote: >> >> Hi folks, >> >> I'm trying to run mongod as a deamon using upstart under the >> unprivileged mongouser account. >> >> The following appears to work great: >> >> # Mongodb Ubuntu upstart file at /etc/init/mongodb.conf >> >> description "MongoDB deamon" >> >> pre-start script >> mkdir -p /home/mongouser/data/db >> mkdir -p /home/mongouser/data/logs >> end script >> >> start on runlevel [2345] >> stop on runlevel [06] >> >> exec su -s /bin/sh -c 'exec "$0" "$@"' mongouser -- >> /home/mongouser/Applications/mongodb/bin/mongod --fork --journal >> --nohttpinterface --dbpath /home/mongouser/data/db --logpath >> /home/mongouser/data/logs/mongodb.log --logappend --port 30000 >> >> ------------ >> >> When I reboot the system mongod indeed starts properly. However, here >> are the issues: >> 1. when I do sudo status mongodb I get "stop/waiting" even though it is >> running >> 2. when I do sudo start mongodb it starts the deamon again, even >> though mongod is already running. >> >> Can anyone tell me what is going wrong here? >> >> -- >> upstart-devel mailing list >> <a href="mailto:upstart-devel@lists.ubuntu.com">upstart-devel@lists.ubuntu.com</a> >> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: >> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/upstart-devel" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/upstart-devel</a> > > -- upstart-devel mailing list <a href="mailto:upstart-devel@lists.ubuntu.com">upstart-devel@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/upstart-devel" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/upstart-devel</a> </div></div></blockquote></div>