[mythtv] [PATCH] Add option to mythfilldatabase to change user

[William Uther]

On Sat, 30 Apr 2005 13:23:10 +1000, Hamish Moffatt 
<hamish at cloud.net.au> wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 30, 2005 at 10:17:30AM +1000, William Uther wrote:
>>   I run my backend as root.  I recently switched from running
>> mythfilldatabase as a cron job to using the internal method... it
>> stopped working.  The problem was that with filldb running as root, it
>> didn't have the correct home dir set, and so it couldn't find the
>> tv_grab_au prefs.
>>
>>   Attached is a patch to add an option to mythfilldatabase that allows
>> it to switch users on startup.  This has two effects:
>>   - the home dir will be set correctly when it tries to get the 
>> grabber
>> prefs
>>   - the grabber script is no longer being run as root
>
> Why not run the backend as non-root instead?

Certainly an option.  I didn't go that path because I hold out hope for 
the real time threads feature.  I did think about having a similar 
option to drop privs early in mythbackend, just after the real-time 
threads have been spawned.  The patch I wrote solved my problem while 
keeping changes localised - it looked like a much less invasive change.

Cheers,

Will         :-}

--
Dr William Uther                           National ICT Australia
Phone: +61 2 9385 6357               Computer Science and Engineering
Email: willu at cse.unsw.edu.au          University of New South Wales
Web: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~willu/     Sydney, Australia