I'm setting up btsync as a test, installed through ppa:tuxpoldo/btsync on ubuntu 13.10.
Seems to work fine, but I found the daemon is running as 'root':
root 2822 0.2 0.1 330964 2344 ? Sl 09:19 0:00 /usr/lib/btsync/btsync-daemon --nodaemon --log file --config /etc/btsync/my.conf
In the config file, I see no option to specify the user. In the user guide, I couldn't find anything about this, and the startup script in /etc/init.d/btsync doesn't help either.
Last but not least I tried the output of the program itself:
BitTorrent Sync 1.2.82
Usage:
btsync-core [--config <path>] [--nodaemon] [--generate-secret] [--dump-sample-config] [--help] [--get-ro-secret <secret>] [--log file]
Options:
--config - location and name of configuration file
--nodaemon - do not use daemon mode
--generate-secret - generate shared secret
--get-ro-secret - get read only secret for existing master secret
--dump-sample-config - dump sample config file
--log file - force logging to file in non-daemon mode
--help - print this message and exit
… and no luck there.
Is it required to run btsync as root? Seems unnecessary to me as no ports <1024 are used.
Good practice learned me to only run services/daemons as root unless absolutely required. Especially for beta software…
What would be the most efficient/recommended way to change to non-root?
Best Answer
You have installed the server version of btsync. If you really want to keep it, use
and select the user you want the daemon to run as. But I'm quite sure, you would like to have something similar to the application on Windows or Mac OSX. In this case you should install the package
btsync-gui:You will find all information you need here:
http://www.yeasoft.com/site/projects:btsync-deb
Here you will find also the links to the forum topics in the BitTorrent Sync help forum