On 11 May 2014 03:13, Matthias Urlichs <matth...@urlichs.de> wrote: > "su" does a bunch of things that are perfectly appropriate for something > that creates a "new" login. That's its job. >
I am still a bit confused, isn't this only when you use the "-l" su flag? Does su do stuff (e.g. pam session stuff) even without the -l flag? Running a daemon under its own UID is an almost-completely different > problem. We already have a tool which does this (start-stop-daemon), > which has been recommended for this task for umpteen years, and which still > works if there is no .service file – for whatever reason. > As a debian developer I was unaware of this. What about the task of running a short program for a brief duration, e.g. from cron scripts? Is using su considered acceptable? e.g. /etc/cron.daily/spamassassin on wheezy has numerous references to su. I think there might be other packages, this is just one I could find the quickest. The name "start-stop-daemon" would suggest this is inappropriate for cron jobs, is that an invalid assumption I made? (please don't turn this into a systemd debate - I simply want to know what is considered best practise for Debian packaging) -- Brian May <br...@microcomaustralia.com.au>
