Setting system user home directory

Dmytro Bilokha dmytro at posteo.net
Sat Dec 16 17:04:19 UTC 2017


On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 03:20:21PM +0100, Miroslav Lachman wrote:
>Dmytro Bilokha wrote on 2017/12/16 14:59:
>> On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 01:44:05PM +0100, Miroslav Lachman wrote:
>>> 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
>>
>> Thanks for the information. Now I'm a little bit confused.
>> I've checked and seems to me that nither www/tomcat85 (servlet
>> container) nor www/glassfish and java/wildfly10 (application servers)
>> ports follow this convention.
>> All of them has directories for logs, configuration and Java
>> applications under the
>> /usr/local. Is there something special in Java servers ports?
>
>
>I know there are ports not following this convention (and I don't
>understand why). Those ports are making troubles if you want to serve
>/usr/local as read only NFS for example.
>
>Miroslav Lachman

Ok, than I'll try to move everything writable from /usr/local to /var.
I plan to put system user's caches and properties to the /var/payara/X.Y.Z/prefs,
where X.Y.Z is an application's version.
And this returns me to the first question: how to properly change user's home
directory on port installation?

-- 
Dmytro Bilokha
dmytro at posteo.net
+38-050-607-41-43


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