Setting system user home directory

Miroslav Lachman 000.fbsd at quip.cz
Sat Dec 16 12:44:16 UTC 2017


Dmytro Bilokha wrote on 2017/12/16 10:40:
> Hello, Everyone!
>
> I'm trying to change www/payara port to make it run under the payara
> user instead of root.
> I've added the following line to the UIDs file:
>
> payara:*:221:221::0:0:Payara Application Server
> user:/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin
>
> And this line to the port makefile:
>
> USERS=        payara
>
> Also, I've made some another changes to the port's scripts to start
> service under payara user.
> Everything seems to be fine, but the service on start/shutdown creates
> some preferences files,
> caches, etc in the payara user's homedir.
> The problem is, that it is impossible to create these files in
> /nonexistent. This fact makes
> service to show some annoying warnings on every startup/shutdown.
> To make service to work properly I want to create directory writable by
> the payara user and
> set it as payara's homedir.
> And I don't want to put these dir under the /usr/home/, it should be
> somewhere in the application,
> like /usr/local/payara-4.1.2.173/prefs.
> As far as I understand, payara user will be created automatically by the
> bsd.port.pre.mk file included in the port's makefile. But, during every
> installation somehow payara user's homedir
> should be changed. I can do it with the following one-liner:
>
> /usr/sbin/pw usermod payara -d ${DATADIR}/prefs
>
> So, the questions are:
> 1. Is it a proper way of doing such kind of things?
> 2. Where in the port's makefile should I put my one-liner? Will it be OK
> to make it like this:
>
> .......head of the make file with setting variables and so on is here......
> .include <bsd.port.pre.mk>
> do-install:
>      .........doing some work here......
>      @/usr/sbin/pw usermod payara -d ${DATADIR}/prefs
> .include <bsd.port.post.mk>
> ....end of the makefile.....
>
> Many thanks for your attention and help.

I don't know Payara but applications should not write its files to 
/usr/local. This should work even if /usr/local is mounted Read Only.
If you need to store configuration (preferences) then it should be in 
/usr/local/etc/payara.
If the application writes some data files like databases, it goes under 
/var/db/payara and log in to /var/log/payara.log or /var/log/payara 
(directory)

Miroslav Lachman



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