Rails - Feb 2006 - Starting lighttpd/Rails apps as user, not root

Hi everyone,

When I want something to start at boot, I put it into /etc/rc*.  The
service will start as root, though.

How do I make it start as a particular user?  I''m worried about the
machine going down and me not being around to pick my app back up when
it does.

I think this would also help my SwitchTower issue of having 8 fastcgi
processes running for the app.  4 started by lighttpd, and 4
started/restarted when I deploy.  Since the deployment user can''t kill
the root-run fastcgi processes, they stay running.

Thanks,

Sean

Sean Hussey wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> When I want something to start at boot, I put it into /etc/rc*.  The
> service will start as root, though.
> 
> How do I make it start as a particular user?  I''m worried about
the
> machine going down and me not being around to pick my app back up when
> it does.
> 
> I think this would also help my SwitchTower issue of having 8 fastcgi
> processes running for the app.  4 started by lighttpd, and 4
> started/restarted when I deploy.  Since the deployment user can''t
kill
> the root-run fastcgi processes, they stay running.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Sean
add a cronjob at @reboot this will get executed at...well...reboot...

M

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 14:33 -0500, Sean Hussey wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> When I want something to start at boot, I put it into /etc/rc*.  The
> service will start as root, though.
> 
> How do I make it start as a particular user?  I''m worried about
the
> machine going down and me not being around to pick my app back up when
> it does.
----
su - some_user -c ''/usr/sbin/lighttpd'' &
----
> 
> I think this would also help my SwitchTower issue of having 8 fastcgi
> processes running for the app.  4 started by lighttpd, and 4
> started/restarted when I deploy.  Since the deployment user can''t
kill
> the root-run fastcgi processes, they stay running.
> 
----
I wouldn''t know about this

Craig

In your lighttpd.conf you can specify user and and group and then (on
Debian anyway) when it does the /etc/init.d/lighttpd start at bootup
it will spawn as that user.

server.username            = "www-data"
server.groupname           = "www-data"

Michael Trier

Sean Hussey wrote:
> When I want something to start at boot, I put it into /etc/rc*.  The
> service will start as root, though.
> 
> How do I make it start as a particular user?  I''m worried about
the
> machine going down and me not being around to pick my app back up when
> it does.
I''m far from being a Unix guru, but your subject line specifically
mentions
lighttpd, which is something I can offer some assistance on.

Basically, you always want root to launch lighttpd, for a production Rails app, 
but what you do is you tell lighttpd to change its user and group when it 
launches. You do that with these lines in your lighttpd.conf:

server.username = "foo"
server.groupname = "bar"

Since lighttpd is run as root, it can pretty much change its user and group, at 
will. The advantage is that since the lighttpd process becomes owned by user 
"foo", any child processes launched by lighttpd are also owned by user
"foo". So
when you have lighttpd launch the FastCGI listeners, they will be owned by user 
"foo".
> I think this would also help my SwitchTower issue of having 8 fastcgi
> processes running for the app.  4 started by lighttpd, and 4
> started/restarted when I deploy.  Since the deployment user can''t
kill
> the root-run fastcgi processes, they stay running.
Yes. It makes the auto-deployment of your changed app code much smoother. Just 
make sure you tell lighttpd to become the user that SwitchTower logs in as and 
you should be all set. That''s basically what I''m doing for all
my Rails apps,
although I don''t have ST wired into my deployment process, just yet...

-Brian

Michael and Brian, that''s the thing.  Thanks!

On 2/1/06, Brian V. Hughes <brianvh@alum.dartmouth.org>
wrote:
> Yes. It makes the auto-deployment of your changed app code much smoother.
Just
> make sure you tell lighttpd to become the user that SwitchTower logs in as
and
> you should be all set. That''s basically what I''m doing
for all my Rails apps,
> although I don''t have ST wired into my deployment process, just
yet...
Yes, that''s how I have it working now.  The only missing piece was the
server-running-as-user.

Thanks again!

Sean