/usr/local/etc/rc.d/ scripts and non-root user

[Lowell Gilbert]

"Zbigniew Szalbot" <zszalbot at gmail.com> writes:

> I have looked at my /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ and realized that the symlink
> I put there has the root as owner. It all works but I would rather use
> a non-root user for to run that script.
>
> $ ls -l /usr/local/etc/rc.d/
> lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    40 May  9  2007 sender.sh ->
> /usr/home/api/sender/start.sh
>
> So I tried:
> $ sudo chown api /usr/local/etc/rc.d/sender.sh
>
> No error but no change either. The original start.sh file has user api
> but the symlink is owned by root.
>
> How can I make sure that the file is indeed run as user api?

I prefer to use cron(8) for this (it has an @reboot value for the
crontab files), but for using startup scripts, I think the best way is
to use su(1) in the script to execute particular commands.